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ren : - , 


1 
1900 
av | 
r BOAT 
| CONTENTS. 
ee nee ¢ | 
THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
LECTURE I. | 
WorK, ve : 4 
te LECTURE II. 
TRAFFIC, . ; tate : ; : 
LECTURE III. 
WAR, . Pk Z eee Se ‘ : 
MUNERA PULVERIS. 
PREFACE, . . : ‘ 
CHAP, 
I. DEFINITIONS, b ‘ . ‘ ; 
Il. STORE-KEEPING, ‘ ; : ° 7 
III. - Comn-KeEvine, : , F . : 
Ps Vs Ponrecn: : A ‘ : : ° 
V. GOVERNMENT, : A ° , es 
VI. MASTERSHIP, . : : 


APPENDICES, ? “ r ; , 





PAGE 


125 


170 
181 
204 


222 








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THE LIBRARY OF 

WICKLIFF 
KITCHELL 
PANA:ILLINOLS 

MARY 

iN 1931 

LIBRARY OF THE 
VNIVERSITY 
OF-ILLINOIS 


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1855 











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CONTENTS.» 





qt 


JORIS: Ge 
THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


LECTURE I. 
Work, + ay ees: ; 4 
» LECTURE II. 
TRAFFIC, .« ; canis to : : : 
LECTURE III. 
War, - - Se ae See ‘ * . 
MUNERA PULVERIS. 
PREFACE, ; : . : ‘ 
“cHar. | : 
J. DEFINITIONS, : ‘ : , : 
Il. STORE-KEEPING, : ta = < ‘ 
Ill. __ Coin-KEEPING, . : : ° : 
i A Seed : é ‘ . . . 
V. GOVERNMENT, : “ A ° : 
| : wu VI. MASTERSHIP, .- , : . : ‘ 
pi: APPENDICES, - : : ; : : 


' PAGE 


ee ©7, 


181 
204 


222 


PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 


PREEACE, 


PRE-RAPHAELITISM, 


ARATRA PENTELICI. 


PREFACE, 


LECTURE 


I. OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS, 
II. IDOLATRY, 
III. IMAGINATION, 
IV. Liane: 

V. STRUCTURE, 
VI. THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS, 
THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND, 


NOTES ON POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA, 


PAGE 


235 
237 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 


ARATRA PENTELICI. 


PLATES FACING PAGE 
I. PorcH OF SAN ZENONE. VERONA, . : » 300 

II. THE ARETHUSA OF SYRACUSE, , ; ‘ 302 
III. THE WARNING TO THE KINGs, ; ‘ ») 302 


V. TOMB OF THE DOGES JACOPO AND LORENZO TIEPOLO, 333 
VI. ARCHAIC ATHENA OF ATHENS AND CORINTH, sr. 33h 
VII. ARCHAIC, CENTRAL AND DECLINING ART OF GREECE, 355 


VIII. THe APOLLO OF SYRACUSE AND THE SELF-MADE MAN, = 366 


IX. APOLLO CHRYSOCOMES OF CLAZOMENG, : «ty 300 

X. MARBLE MASONRY IN THE DUOMA OF VERONA, 381 
XI. THE First ELEMENTS OF SCULPTURE, , o£ 4-302 
XII. BRANCH OF PHILLYREA. DARK PURPLE, . , 390 


XIII. GREEK FLAT RELIEF AND SCULPTURE BY EDGED 
INCISION, . ; : . . oe 


XIV. APOLLO AND THE PYTHON. HERACLES AND THE 
NEMEAN LION, : : ; ‘ . 400 


XV. HERA OF ARGOS. ZEUS OF SYRACUSE, . , 401 


XVI. DEMETER OF MESSENE. HERA OF CROSSUS, . NEL Ts? 


PLATES FACING PAGE 
XVII. ATHENA OF THURIUM. SEREIE LIGEIA OF TERINA, 402 


XVIII. ARTEMIS OF SYRACUSE. HERA OF LACINIAN CAPE, 404 


XIX. ZEUS OF MESSENE. AJAX OF Opus, . ~ - BOs 

XX. GREEK AND BARBARIAN SCULPTURE, : ° 407 

XXI. THE BEGINNINGS OF CHIVALRY, : : - 409 
FIGURE PAGE 
I. SPECIMEN OF PLATE, : : . : . 293 
2. WooDpDcutT, : : ° ‘ . : . aa8 
3. FIGURE ON GREEK TYPE OF VASES, é : ° 326 
4. EARLY DRAWING OF THE MYTH, - é - See. 
b+: Cut; Givi in Tore. oes : s ; ° 332 
6. ENGRAVING ON COIN, . . : : : 22) ae 
7. DRAWING OF FisH. By Turner, . . 2 : 36a 
8. Iron Bar, : . . ° . : « 379 


9. DIAGRAM OF LEAF, ° 3 ° . ° 391 


THE 
CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
THREE LECTURES ON 


WORK, TRAFFIC AND WAR 


= < wher" 1 a ee) « i 
ae ae yp ee T 





PREFACE. 


Twenty years ago, there was no lovelier piece of lowland 
scenery in South England, nor any more pathetic in the world, 
by its expression of sweet human character and life, than that 
immediately bordering on the sources of the Wandle, and in- 
cluding the lower moors of Addington, and the villages of 
Beddington and Carshalton, with all their pools and streams. 
No clearer or diviner waters ever sang with constant lips of 
the hand which ‘ giveth rain from heaven ;’ no pastures ever 
liehtened in spring time with more passionate blossoming ; 
no sweeter homes ever hallowed the heart of the passer-by 
with their pride of peaceful gladness—fain-hidden—yet full- 
confessed. The place remains, or, until a few months ago, 
remained, nearly unchanged in its larger features ; but, with 
deliberate mind I say, that I have never seen anything so 
ghastly in its inner tragic meaning,—not in Pisan Maremma— 
not by Campagna tomb, —not by the sand-isles of the Torcellan 
shore,—as the slow stealing of aspects of reckless, indolent, 
animal neglect, over the delicate sweetness of that English 
scene : nor is any blasphemy or impiety—any frantic saying or 
godless thought—more appalling to me, using the best power of 
judgment I have to discern its sense and scope, than the insolent 
defilings of those springs by the human herds that drink of 
them. Just where the welling of stainless water, trembling and 
pure, like a body of light, enters the pool of Carshalton, cutting 
itself a radiant channel down to the gravel, through warp of 
feathery weeds, all waving, which it traverses with its deep 
threads of clearness, like the chalcedony in moss-agate, starred 
here and there with white grenouillette ; justin the very rush 
and murmur of the first spreading currents, the human 





6 PREFACE. 


wretches of the place cast their street and house foulness ; 
heaps of dust and slime, and broken shreds of old metal, and 
rags of putrid clothes ; they having neither energy to cart it 
away, nor decency enough to dig it into the ground, thus shed 
into the stream, to diffuse what venom of it will float and 
melt, far away, in all places where God meant those waters to 
bring joy and health. And, in a little pool, behind some 
houses farther in the village, where another spring rises, the 
shattered stones of the well, and of the little fretted channel 
which was long ago built and traced for it by gentler hands, 
lie scattered, each from each, under a ragged bank of mortar, 
and scoria; and bricklayers’ refuse, on one side, which the 
clean water nevertheless chastises to purity; but it cannot 
conquer the dead earth beyond ; and there, circled and coiled 
under festering scum, the stagnant edge of the pool effaces 
itself into a slope of black slime, the accumulation of indolent 
years. Half-a-dozen men, with one day’s work, could cleanse 
those pools, and trim the flowers about their banks, and make 
every breath of summer air above them rich with cool balm ; 
and every glittering wave medicinal, as if it ran, troubled of 
angels, from the porch of Bethesda. But that day’s work is 
never given, nor will be; nor will any joy be possible to heart 
of man, for evermore, about those wells of English waters. 
When I last left them, I walked up slowly through the back 
streets of Croydon, from the old church to the hospital; and, 
just on the left, before coming up to the crossing of the High 
Street, there was a new public-house built. And the front of 
it was built in so wise manner, that a recess of two feet was 
left below its front windows, between them and the street- 
pavement—a recess too narrow for any possible use (for even 
if it had been occupied by a seat, as in old time it might have 
been, everybody walking along the street would have fallen 
over the legs of the reposing wayfarers). But, by way of 
making this two feet depth of freehold land more expressive 
of the dignity of an establishment for the sale of spirituous 
liquors, it was fenced from the pavement by an imposing iron 
railing, having four or five spearheads to the yard of it, and 
six feet high ; containing as much iron and iron-work, indeed, 


PREFACE. 1 


as could well be put into the space; and by this stately ar- 
rangement, the little piece of dead ground within, between 
wall and street, became a protective receptacle of refuse; cigar 
ends, and oyster shells, and the like, such as an open-handed 
English street-populace habitually scatters from its presence, 
and was thus left, unsweepable by any ordinary methods. 
Now the iron bars which, uselessly (or in great degree worse 
than uselessly), enclosed this bit of ground, and made it pesti- 
lent, represented a quantity of work which would have cleansed 
the Carshalton pools three times over ;—of work, partly 
cramped and deadly, in the mine ; partly fierce * and exhaus- 
tive, at the furnace ; partly foolish and sedentary, of ill-taught 
students making bad designs: work from the beginning to 
the last fruits of it, and in all the branches of it, venomous, 
deathful, and miserable. Now, how did it come to pass that 
this work was done instead of the other; that the strength 
and life of the English operative were spent in defiling ground, 
instead of redeeming it ; and in producing an entirely (in that 
place) valueless piece of metal, which can neither be eaten nor 
breathed, instead of medicinal fresh air, and pure water ? 
There is but one reason for it, and at present a conclusive 
one,—that the capitalist can charge per-centage on the work 


* ¢A fearful occurrence took place a few days since, near Wolverhamp- 
ton. Thomas Snape, aged nineteen, was on duty as the ‘keeper’ of a 
blast furnace at Deepfield, assisted by John Gardner, aged eighteen, and 
Joseph Swift, aged thirty-seven. The furnace contained four tons of 
molten iron, and an equal amount of cinders, and ought to have been 
run out at 7.30 P.M. But Snape and his mates, engaged in talking and 
drinking, neglected their duty, and in the meantime, the iron rose in 
the furnace until it reached a pipe wherein water was contained. Just 
as the men had stripped, and were proceeding to tap the furnace, the 
water in the pipe, converted into steam. burst down its front and let 
loose on them the molten metal, which instantaneously consumed Gard- 
ner; Snape, terribly burnt, and mad with pain, leaped into the canal 
and then ran home and fell dead on the threshold, Swift bunvived to 
reach the hospital, where he died too. 

In further illustration of this matter, I beg the reader to look at the 
article on the ‘ Decay of the English Race,’ in the ‘ Pull-Mull Gazette’ of 
April 17, of this year ; and at the articles on the ‘ Report of the Thames 
Commission,’ in any journals of the same date. 


8 PREFAUCE. 


in the one case, and cannot in the other. If, having certain 
funds for supporting labour at my disposal, I pay men merely 
to keep my ground in order, my money is, in that function, 
spent once for all; but if 1 pay them to dig iron out of my 
ground, and work it, and sell it, I can charge rent for the 
ground, and per-centage both on the manufacture and the 
sale, and make my capital profitable in these three bye-ways. 
The greater part of the profitable investment of capital, in the 
present day, is in operations of this kind, in which the public 
is persuaded to buy something of no use to it, on production, 
or sale, of which, the capitalist may charge per-centage ; the 
said public remaining all the while under the persuasion that 
the per-centages thus obtained are real national gains, where- 
as, they are merely filchings out of partially light pockets, to 
swell heavy ones. 

Thus, the Croydon publican buys the iron railing, to make 
himself more conspicuous to drunkards. The public-house- 
keeper on the other side of the way presently buys another 
railing, to out-rail him with. Both are, as to their relative at- 
tractiveness to customers of taste, just where they were before ; 
but they have lost the price of the railings ; which they must 
either themselves finally lose, or make their aforesaid customers 
of taste pay, by raising the price of their beer, or adulterating 
it. Hither the publicans, or their customers, are thus poorer 
by precisely what the capitalist has gained ; and the value of 
the work itself, meantime, has been lost to the nation; the 
iron bars in that form and place being wholly useless. It is 
this mode of taxation of the poor by the rich which is referred 
to in the text (page 31), in comparing the modern acquisitive 
power of capital with that of the lance and sword ; the only 
difference being that the levy of black mail in old times was 
by force, and is now by cozening. The old rider and reiver 
frankly quartered himself on the publican for the night ; the 
modern one merely makes his lance into an iron spike, and 
persuades his host to buy it. One comes as an open robber, 
the other as a cheating pedlar ; but the result, to the injured 
person’s pocket, is absolutely the same. Of course many use- 
ful industries mingle with, aud disguise the useless ones ; and 


PREFACE. 9 


in the habits of energy aroused by the struggle, there is a 
certain direct good. It is far better to spend four thousand 
pounds in making a good gun, and then to blow it to pieces, 
than to pass life in idleness. Only do not let it be called 
‘political economy.’ There is also a confused notion in the 
minds of many persons, that the gathering of the property of 
the poor into the hands of the rich does no ultimate harm ; 
since, in whosesoever hands it may be, it must be spent at last, 
and thus, they think, return to the poor again. This fallacy 
has been again and again exposed ; but grant the plea true, 
and the same apology may, of course, be made for black mail, 
or any other form of robbery. It might be (though practically 
it never is) as advantageous for the nation that the robber 
should have the spending of the money he extorts, as that the 
person robbed should have spent it. But this ino excuse 
for the theft. IfI were to puta turnpike on the road where 
it passes my own gate, and endeavour to exact a shilling from 
every passenger, the public would soon do away with my gate, 
without listening to any plea on my part that ‘it was as ad- 
vantageous to them, in the end, that I should spend their 
shillings, as that they themselves should.’ But if, instead of 
out-facing them with a turnpike, I can only persuade them to 
come in and buy stones, or old iron, or any other useless 
thing, out of my ground, I may rob them to the same extent, 
and be, moreover, thanked as a public benefactor, and pro- 
moter of commercial prosperity. And this main question for 
the poor of England—for the poor of all countries—is wholly 
omitted in every common treatise on the subject of wealth. 
Even by the labourers themselves, the operation of capital is 
regarded only in its effect on their immediate interests ; never 
in the far more terrific power of its appointment of the kind 
and the object of labour. It matters little, ultimately, how 
much a labourer is paid for making anything ; but it matters 
fearfully what the thing is, which he is compelled to make. If 
his labour is so ordered as to produce food, and fresh air, and 
fresh water, no matter that his wages are low ;—the food and 
fresh air and water will be at last there ; and he will at last 
get them.  But-if he is paid to destroy food and fresh air, or 


10 PREFACE. 


to produce iron bars instead of them,—the food and air will 
finally not be there, and he will not get them, to his great and 
final inconvenience. So that, conclusively, in political as in 
household economy, the great question is, not so much what 
money you have in your pocket, as what you will buy with it, 
and do with it. 

I have been long accustomed, as all men engaged in work 
of investigation must be, to hear my statements laughed at 
for years, before they are examined or believed; and I am 
generally content to wait the public’s time. But it has not 
been without displeased surprise that I have found myself 
totally unable, as yet, by any repetition, or illustration, to 
force this plain thought into my readers’ heads,—that the 
wealth of nations, as of men, consists in substance, not in 
ciphers ; and that the real good of all work, and of all com- 
merce, depends on the final worth of the thing you make, or 
get by it. This is a practical enough statement, one would 
think: but the English public has been so possessed by its 
modern school of economists with the notion that Business is 
always good, whether it be busy in mischief or in benefit ; 
and that buying and selling are always salutary, whatever 
the intrinsic worth of what you buy or sell,—that it seems 
impossible to gain so much as a patient hearing for any in- 
quiry respecting the substantial result of our eager modern 
labours. I have never felt more checked by the sense of this 
impossibility than in arranging the heads of the following 
three lectures, which, though delivered at considerable inter- 
vals of time, and in different places, were not prepared with- 
out reference to each other. Their connection would, how- 
ever, have been made far more distinct, if I had not been 
prevented, by what I feel to be another great difficulty in 
addressing English audiences, from enforcing, with any de- 
cision, the common, and to me the most important, part of 
their subjects. I chiefly desired (as I have just said) to 
question my hearers—operatives, merchants, and soldiers, as 
to the ultimate meaning of the business they had in hand; 
and to know from them what they expected or intended their 
manufacture to come to, their selling to come to, and their 


PREFACE. 11 


killing to come to. That appeared the first point needing 
determination before I could speak to them with any real 
utility or effect. ‘You craftsmen—salesmen—swordsmen,— 
do but tell me clearly what you want, then, if I can say any- 
thing to help you, I will; and if not, I will account to you as 
I best may for my inability.’ But in order to put this ques- 
tion into any terms, one had first of all to face the difficulty 
just spoken of—-to me for the present insuperable,—the diffi- 
culty of knowing whether to address one’s audience as believ- 
ing, or not believing, in any other world than this. For if you 
address any average modern English company as believing in 
an Eternal life, and endeavour to draw any conclusions, from 
this assumed belief, as to their present business, they will 
forthwith tell you that what you say is very beautiful, but it 
is not practical. If, on the contrary, you frankly address 
them as unbelievers in Eternal life, and try to draw any con- 
sequences from that unbelief,—they immediately hold you 
for an accursed person, and shake off the dust from their feet 
at you. And the more I thought over what I had got to say, 
the less I found I could say it, without some reference to this 
intangible or intractable part of the subject. It made all the 
difference, in asserting any principle of war, whether one 
assumed that a discharge of artillery would merely knead 
down a certain quantity of red clay into a level line, as ina 
brick field ; or whether, out of every separately Christian- 
named portion of the ruinous heap, there went out, into the 
smoke and dead-fallen air of battle, some astonished condi- 
tion of soul, unwillingly released. It made all the difference, 
in speaking of the possible range of commerce, whether one 
assumed that all bargains related only to visible property—or 
whether property, for the present invisible, but nevertheless 
real, was elsewhere purchasable on other terms. It made all 
the difference, in addressing a body of men subject to consid« 
erable hardship, and having to find some way out of it— 
whether one could confidentially say to them, ‘My friends,— 
you have only to die, and all will be right ;’ or whether one 
had any secret misgiving that such advice was more blessed 
to him that gave, than to him that took it. And therefore 


pe PREFACE. 


the deliberate reader will find, throughout these lectures, a 
hesitation in driving points home, and a pausing short of con- 
clusions which he will feel I would fain have come to; hesita- 
tion which arises wholly from this uncertainty of my hearers’ 
temper. For I do not now speak, nor have I ever spoken, 
since the time of my first forward youth, in any proselyting 
temper, as desiring to persuade any one of what, in such 
matters, I thought myself; but, whomsoever I venture to ad- 
dress, I take for the time his creed as I find it; and endeay- 
our to push it into such vital fruit as it seems capable of. 
Thus, it is a creed with a great part of the existing English 
people, that they are in possession of a book which tells them, 
straight from the lips of God all they ought to do, and need 
to know. Ihave read that book, with as much care as most 
of them, for some forty years; and am thankful that, on those 
who trust it, I can press its pleadings. My endeavour has 
been uniformly to make them trust it more deeply than they 
do; trust it, not in their own favourite verses only, but in the 
sum of all; trust it not asa fetish or talisman, which they 
are to be saved by daily repetitions of ; but as a Captain’s 
order, to be heard and obeyed at their peril. I was always 
encouraged by supposing my hearers to hold such belief. To 
these, if to any, I once had hope of addressing, with accept- 
ance, words which insisted on the guilt of pride, and the 
futility of avarice ; from these, if from any, I once expected 
ratification of a political economy, which asserted that the life 
was more than the meat, and the body than raiment; and 
these, it once seemed to me, I might ask without accusation 
or fanaticism, not merely in doctrine of the lips, but in the 
bestowal of their heart’s treasure, to separate themselves from 
the crowd of whom it is written, ‘After all these things do 
the Gentiles seek.’ 

It cannot, however, be assumed, with any semblance of 
reason, that a@ general audience is now wholly, or even in 
majority, composed of these religious persons. A large por- 
tion must always consist of men who admit no such creed ; or 
who, at least, are inaccessible to appeals founded on it. And 
as, with the so-called Christian, I desired to plead for honest 


PREFACE. 12 


declaration and fulfilment of his belief in life,—with the so- 
called Infidel, I desired to plead for an honest declaration and 
fulfilment of his belief in death. The dilemma is inevitable. 
Men must either hereafter live, or hereafter die ; fate may be 
bravely met, and conduct wisely ordered, on either expecta~ 
tion; but never in hesitation between ungrasped hope, and 
unconfronted fear. We usually believe in immortality, so far 
as to avoid preparation for death ; and in mortality, so far as 
to avoid preparation for anything after death. Whereas, a 
wise man will at least hold himself prepared for one or other 
of two events, of which one or other is inevitable ; and will 
have all things in order, for his sleep, or in readiness, for his 
awakening. 

Nor have we any right to call it an ignoble judgment, if he 
determine to put them in order, as for sleep. A brave belief 
in life is indeed an enviable state of mind, but, as far as I can 
discern, an unusual one. I know few Christians so convinced 
of the splendour of the rooms in their Father’s house, as to 
be happier when their friends are called to those mansions, 
than they would have been if the Queen had sent for them to 
live at Court: nor has the Church’s most ardent ‘desire to 
depart, and be with Christ,’ ever cured it of the singular habit 
of putting on mourning for every person summoned to such 
departure. On the contrary, a brave belief in death has been 
assuredly held by many not ignoble persons, and it is a sign 
of the last depravity in the Church itself, when it assumes 
that such a belief is inconsistent with either purity of charac- 
ter, or energy of hand. The shortness of life is not, to any 
rational person, a conclusive reason for wasting the space of 
it which may be granted him ; nor does the anticipation of 
death to-morrow suggest, to any one but a drunkard, the ex- 
pediency of drunkenness to-day. To teach that there is no 
device in the grave, may indeed make the deviceless person 
more contented in his dulness; but it will make the deviser 
only more earnest in devising, nor is human conduct likely, in 
every case, to be purer under the conviction that all its evil 
may in a moment be pardoned, and all its wrong-doing in a 
moment redeemed ; and that the sigh of repentance, which 


14 PREFACE. 


purges the guilt of the past, will waft the soul into a felicity 
which forgets its pain,—than it may be under the sterner, and 
to many not unwise minds, more probable, apprehension, that 
‘what aman soweth that shall he also reap —or others reap,— 
when he, the living seed of pestilence, walketh no more in 
darkness, but lies down therein. 

But to men whose feebleness of sight, or bitterness of soul, 
or the offence given by the conduct of those who claim higher 
hope, may have rendered this painful creed the only possible 
one, there is an appeal to be made, more secure in its ground 
than any which can be addressed to happier persons. I would 
fain, if I might offencelessly, have spoken to them as if none 
others heard ; and have said thus: Hear me, you dying men, 
who will soon be deaf for ever. Jor these others, at your 
right hand and your left, who look forward to a state of in- 
finite existence, in which all their errors will be overruled, 
and all their faults forgiven; for these, who, stained and 
blackened in the battle smoke of mortality, have but to dip 
themselves for an instant in the font of death, and to rise re- 
newed of plumage, as a dove that is covered with silver, and 
her feathers like gold; for these, indeed, it may be permis- 
sible to waste their numbered moments, through faith in a 
future of innumerable hours; to these, in their weakness, it 
may be conceded that they should tamper with sin which can 
only bring forth fruit of righteousness, and profit by the in- 
iquity which, one day, will be remembered no more. In them, 
it may be no sign of hardness of heart to neglect the poor, 
over whom they know their Master is watching ; and to leave 
those to perish temporarily, who cannot perish eternally. 
But, for you, there is no such hope, and therefore no such 
excuse. This fate, which you ordain for the wretched, you 
believe to be all their inheritance ; you may crush them, be- 
fore the moth, and they will never rise to rebuke you ;—their 
breath, which fails for lack of food, once expiring, will never 
be recalled to whisper against you a word of accusing ;—they 
and you, as you think, shall lie down together in the dust, 
and the worms cover you ;—and for them there shall be ne 
consolation, and on you no vengeance,—only the question 


PREFACE. 15 


murmured above your grave: ‘Who shall repay him what he 
hath done?’ Is it therefore easier for you in your heart to 
inflict the sorrow for which there is no remedy? Will you 
take, wantonly, this little all of his life from your poor broth- 
er, and make his brief hours long to him with pain? Will 
you be readier to the injustice which can never be redressed ; 
and niggardly of mercy which you can bestow but once, and 
which, refusing, you refuse for ever? I think better of you, 
even of the most selfish, than that you would do this, well 
understood. And for yourselves, it seems to me, the question 
becomes not less grave, in these curt limits. If your life were 
but a fever fit,—the madness of a night, whose follies were 
all to be forgotten in the dawn, it might matter little how you 
fretted away the sickly hours,—what toys you snatched at, or 
let fall—what visions you followed wistfully with the de- 
ceived eyes of sleepless phrenzy. Is the earth only an hos- 
pital? Play, if you care to play, on the floor of the hospital 
dens. Knit its straw into what crowns please you; gather 
the dust of it for treasure, and die rich in that, clutching at 
the black motes in the air with your dying hands ;—and yet, 
it may be well with you. But if this life be no dream, and 
the world no hospital; if all the peace and power and joy 
you can ever win, must be won now; and all fruit of victory 
gathered here, or never ;—will you still, throughout the puny 
totality of your life, weary yourselves in the fire for vanity ? 
If there is no rest which remaineth for you, is there none you 
might presently take? was this grass of the earth made green 
for your shroud only, not for your bed? and can you never 
lie down upon it, but only under it? The heathen, to whose 
creed you have returned, thought not so. They knew that 
life brought its contest, but they expected from it also the 
crown of all contest: No proud one! no jewelled circlet flam- 
ing through Heaven above the height of the unmerited throne ; 
only some few leaves of wild olive, cool to the tired brow, 
through a few years of peace. It should have been of gold, 
they thought; but Jupiter was poor; this was the best the 
god could give them. Seeking a greater than this, they had 
known it a mockery. Not in war, not in wealth, not in tyr- 


16 PREFACE. 


anny, was there any happiness to be found for them—only 
in kindly peace, fruitful and free. The wreath was to be of 
wild olive, mark you :—the tree that grows carelessly, tufting 
the rocks with no vivid bloom, no verdure of branch ; only 
with soft snow of blossom, and scarcely fulfilled fruit, mixed 
with grey leaf and thornset stem; no fastening of diadem 
for you but with such sharp embroidery! But this, such as 
it is, you may win while yet you live ; type of grey honour 
and sweet rest.* Free-heartedness, and graciousness, and 
undisturbed trust, and requited love, and the sight of the 
peace of others, and the ministry to their pain ;—these, and 
the blue sky above you, and the sweet waters and flowers of 
the earth beneath; and mysteries and presences, innumer- 
able, of living things,—these may yet be here your riches ; 
untormenting and divine: serviceable for the life that now is 
nor, it may be, without promise of that which is to come. 


* weditdesca, aebAwy yy eveKev. 


THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


LECTURE LIL. 


WORK. 
(Delivered before the Working Men’s Institute, at Camberwell.) 


My Frienps,—I have not come among you to-night to en« 
deavour to give you an entertaining lecture ; but to tell you 
a few plain facts, and ask you some plain, but necessary 
questions. I have seen and known too much of the struggle 
for life among our labouring population, to feel at ease, even 
under any circumstances, in inviting them to dwell on the 
trivialities of my own studies ; but, much more, as I meet to- 
night, for the first time, the members of a working Institute 
established in the district in which I have passed the greater 
part of my life, I am desirous that we should at once under- 
stand each other, on graver matters. I would fain tell you, 
with what feelings, and with what hope, I regard this Insti- 
tution, as one of many such, now happily established through- 
out England, as well as in other countries ;—Institutions 
which are preparing the way for a great change in all the 
circumstances of industrial life; but of which the success 
must wholly depend upon our clearly understanding the cir- 
cumstances and necessary limits of this change. No teacher 
can truly promote the cause of education, until he knows the 
conditions of the life for which that education is to prepare 
his pupil. And the fact that he is called upon to address 
you nominally, as a ‘ Working Class,’ must compel him, if he 
is in any wise earnest or thoughtful, to inquire in the outset, 

2 


18 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


on what you yourselves suppose this class distinction has 
been founded in the past, and must be founded in the future. 
The manner of the amusement, and the matter of the teach- 
ing, which any of us can offer you, must depend wholly on 
our first understanding from you, whether you think the dis- 
tinction heretofore drawn between working men and others, 
is truly or falsely founded. Do you accept it as it stands? 
do you wish it to be modified? or do you think the object of 
education is to efface it, and make us forget it for ever? 

Let me make myself more distinctly understood. We call 
this—you and I—a ‘ Working Men’s’ Institute, and our col- 
lege in London, a ‘ Working Men’s’ College. Now, how do 
you consider that these several institutes differ, or ought to 
differ, from ‘idle men’s’ institutes and ‘idle men’s’ colleges ? 
Or by what other word than ‘idle’ shall I distinguish those 
whom the happiest and wisest of working men do not object 
to call the ‘ Upper Classes?’ Are there really upper classes, 
—are there lower? How much should they always be ele- 
vated, how much always depressed? And, gentlemen and 
ladies—I pray those of you who are here to forgive me the 
offence there may be in what Iam going to say. It is not J 
who wish to say it. Bitter voices say it ; voices of battle and 
of famine through all the world, which must be heard some 
day, whoever keeps silence. Neither is it to you specially 
that I say it. Iam sure that most now present know their 
duties of kindness, and fulfil them, better perhaps than I do 
mine. ButI speak to you as representing your whole class, 
which errs, I know, chiefly by thoughtlessness, but not there- 
fore the less terribly. Wilful error is limited by the will, but 
what limit is there to that of which we are unconscious ? 

Bear with me, therefore, while I turn to these workmen, 
and ask them, also as representing a great multitude, what 
they think the ‘ upper classes’ are, and ought to be, in rela- 
tion to them. Answer, you workmen who are here, as you 
would among yourselves, frankly ; and tell me how you would 
have me call those classes. Am I to call them—would you 
think me right in calling them—the idle classes? I think you 
would feel somewhat uneasy, and as if I were not treating 


WORK. 19 


my subject honestly, or speaking from my heart, if I went on 
under the supposition that all rich people were idle. You 
would be both unjust and unwise if you allowed me to say 
that ;—not less unjust than the rich people who say that all 
the poor are idle, and will never work if they can help it, or 
more than they can help. 

For indeed the fact is, that there are idle poor and idle 
rich ; and there are busy poor and busy rich. Many a beggar 
is as lazy as if he had ten thousand a year; and many a man 
of large fortune is busier than his errand-boy, and never 
would think of stopping in the street to play marbles. So 
that, in a large view, the distinction between workers and 
idlers, as between knaves and honest men, runs through the 
very heart and innermost economies of men of all ranks and 
in all positions. There is a working class—strong and happy 
—among both rich and poor; there is an idle class—weak, 
wicked, and miserable—among both rich and poor. And the 
worst of the misunderstandings arising between the two orders 
come of the unlucky fact that the wise of one class habitually 
contemplate the foolish of the other. If the busy rich people 
watched and rebuked the idle rich people, all would be right ; 
and if the busy poor people watched and rebuked the idle 
poor people, all would be right. But each class has a tendency 
to look for the faults of the other. A hard-working man of 
property is particularly offended by an idle beggar ; and an 
orderly, but poor, workman is naturally intolerant of the licen- 
tious luxury of the rich. And what is severe judgment in the 
minds of the just men of either class, becomes fierce enmity 
in the unjust—but among the unjust only. None but the dis- 
solute among the poor look upon the rich as their natural 
enemies, or desire to pillage their houses and divide their 
property. None but the dissolute among the rich speak in 
opprobrious terms of the vices and follies of the poor. 

There is, then, no class distinction between idle and indus- 
trious people ; and I am going to-night to speak only of the 
industrious. The idle people we will put out of our thoughts 
at once—they are mere nuisances—what ought to be done with 
them, well talk of at another time. But there are class dis- 


20 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


tinctions, among the industrious themselves ; tremendous dis 
tinctions, which rise and fall to every degree in the infinite 
thermometer of human pain and of human power—distinc- 
tions of high and low, of lost and won, to the whole reach of 
man’s soul and body. 

These separations we will study, and the laws of them, 
among energetic men only, who, whether they work or whether 
they play, put their strength into the work, and their strength 
into the game ; being in the full sense of the word ‘ industri- 
ous,’ one way or another—with a purpose, or without. And 
these distinctions are mainly four : 

I. Between those who work, and those who play. 

Il. Between those who produce the means of life, and those 
who consume them. 

Ill. Between those who work with the head, and those who 
work with the hand. 

IV. Between those who work wisely, and who work fool- 
ishly. 

For easier memory, let us say we are going to oppose, in 
our examination.— 

I. Work to play ; 

II. Production to consumption ; 
lil. Head to Hand; and, 
IV. Sense to nonsense. 

I. First, then, of the distinction between the classes who 
work and the classes who play. Of course we must agree 
upon a definition of these terms,—work and play,—before 
going farther. Now, roughly, not with vain subtlety of defi- 
nition, but for plain use of the words, ‘play’ is an exertion of 
body or mind, made to please ourselves, and with no deter- 
mined end ; and work is a thing done because it ought to be 
done, and with a determined end. You play, as you call it, 
at cricket, for instance. ‘That is as hard work as anything 
else ; but it amuses you, and it has no result but the amuse- 
ment. If it were done as an ordered form of exercise, for 
health’s sake, it would become work directly. So, in like 
manner, whatever we do to please ourselves, and only for the 
sake of the pleasure, not for an ultimate object, is ‘play,’ the 


WORK. 21 


‘pleasing thing,’ not the useful thing. Play may be useful in 
a secondary sense (nothing is indeed more useful or necessary) ; 
but the use of it depends on its being spontaneous. 

Let us, then, enquire together what sort of games the play- 
ing class in England spend their lives in playing at. 

The first of all English games is making money. That is 
an all-absorbing game; and we knock each other down often- 
er in playing at that than at foot-ball, or any other roughest 
sport ; and it is absolutely without purpose ; no one who en- 
gages heartily in that game ever knows why. Ask a great 
money-maker what he wants to do with his money—he never 
knows. He doesn’t make it to do anything with it. He gets 
it only that he may get it. ‘What will you make of what you 
have got?’ youask. ‘Well, I'll get more,’ he says. Just as, 
at cricket, you get more runs. There’s no use in the runs, but 
to get more of them than other people is the game. And 
there’s no use in the money, but to have more of it than other 
people is the game. So all that great foul city of London 
there,—rattling, growling, smoking, stinking,—a ghastly heap 
of fermenting brickwork, pouring out poison at every pore,— 
you fancy it is a city of work? Not astreetof it! Itis a 
ereat city of play; very nasty play, and very hard play, but 
still play. It is only Lord’s cricket ground without the turf,— 
a huge billiard table without the cloth, and with pockets as deep 
as the bottomless pit; but mainly a billiard table, after all. 

Well, the first great English game is this playing at coun- 
ters. It differs from the rest in that it appears always to be 
producing money, while every other game is expensive. But 
it does not always produce money. There’s a great difference 
between ‘ winning’ money and ‘ making’ it; a great difference 
between getting it out of another man’s pocket into ours, or 
filling both. Collecting money is by no means the same thing 
as making it ; the tax-gatherer’s house is not the Mint; and 
much of the apparent gain (so called), in commerce, is only a 
form of taxation on carriage or exchange. — 

Our next great English game, however, hunting and shoot- 
ing, is costly altogether ; and how much we are fined for it 
annually in land, horses, gamekeepers, and game laws, and all 


22 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


else that accompanies that beautiful and special English game, 
I will not endeavour to count now: but note only that, except 
for exercise, this is not merely a useless game, but a deadly 
one, to all connected with it. For through horse-racing, you 
get every form of what the higher classes everywhere call 
‘Play,’ in distinction from all other plays; that is—gambling; 
by no means a beneficial or recreative game: and, through 
game-preserving, you get also some curious laying out of 
ground; that beautiful: arrangement of dwelling-house for 
man and beast, by which we have grouse and black-cock—so 
many brace to the acre, and men and women—so many brace 
to the garret. I often wonder what the angelic builders and 
surveyors—the angelic builders who build the ‘many man- 
sions’ up above there ; and the angelic surveyors, who meas- 
ured that four-square city with their measuring reeds—I won- 
der what they think, or are supposed to think, of the laying 
out of ground by this nation, which has set itself, as it seems, 
literally to accomplish, word for word, or rather fact for word, 
in the persons of those poor whom its Master left to represent 
him, what that Master said of himself—that foxes and birds 
had homes, but He none. 

Then, next to the gentlemen’s game of hunting, we must 
put the ladies’ game of dressing. It is not the cheapest of 
games. I saw a brooch at a jeweller’s in Bond Street a fort- 
night ago, not an inch wide, and without any singular jewel 
in it, yet worth 3,000/._ And I wish I could tell you what this 
‘play’ costs, altogether, in England, France, and Russia an- 
nually. But it is a pretty game, and on certain terms, I like 
it; nay, I don’t see it played quite as much as I would fain 
have it. You ladies like to lead the fashion :—by all means 
lead it—lead it thoroughly, lead it far enough. Dress your- 
selves nicely, and dress everybody else nicely. Lead the fash- 
ions for the poor first ; make them look well, and you yourselves 
will look, in ways of which you have now no conception, all 
the better. The fashions you have set for some time among 
your peasantry are not pretty ones ; their doublets are too 
irregularly slashed, and the wind blows too frankly through 
them. 


WORK. 23 


Then there are other games, wild enough, as I could show 
you if I had time. 

There’s playing at literature, and playing at art—very dif- 
ferent, both, from working at literature, or working at art, 
but I’ve no time to speak of these. I pass to the greatest of 
all—the play of plays, the great gentlemen’s game, which 
ladies like them best to play at,—the game of War. It is en- 
trancingly pleasant to the imagination ; the facts of it, not 
always so pleasant. We dress for it, however, more finely 
than for any other sport; and go out to it, not merely in scar- 
let, as to hunt, but in scarlet and gold, and all manner of fine 
colours: of course we could fight better in grey, and without 
feathers ; but all nations have agreed that it is good to be 
well dressed at this play. Then the bats and balls are very 
costly ; our English and French bats, with the balls and 
wickets, even those which we don’t make any use of, costing, 
I suppose, now about fifteen millions of money annually to 
each nation ; all of which, you know is paid for by hard la- 
bourer’s work in the furrow and furnace. A costly game !— 
not to speak of its consequences ; I will say at present nothing 
of these. The mere immediate cost of all these plays is what 
I want you to consider ; they all cost deadly work somewhere, 
as many of us know too well. The jewel-cutter, whose 
sight fails over the diamonds; the weaver, whose arm fails 
over the web; the iron-forger, whose breath fails before the 
furnace—they know what work is—they, who have all the 
work, and none of the play, except a kind they have named 
for themselves down in the black north country, where ‘ play’ 
means being laid up by sickness. It is a pretty example for 
philologists, of varying dialect, this change in the sense of 
the word ‘play,’ as used in the black country of Birmingham, 
and the red and black country of Baden Baden. Yes, gentle- 
men, and gentlewomen, of England, who think ‘one moment 
unamused a misery, not made for feeble man,’ this is what 
-you have brought the word ‘play’ to mean, in the heart of 
merry England! You may have your fluting and piping; 
but there are sad children sitting in the market-place, who 
indeed cannot say to you, ‘We have piped unto you, and ye 


24 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


have not danced :’ but eternally shall say to you, ‘We have 
mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented.’ 

This, then, is the first distinction between the ‘upper and 
lower’ classes. And this is one which is by no means neces- 
sary ; which indeed must, in process of good time, be by all 
honest men’s consent abolished. Men will be taught that an 
existence of play, sustained by the blood of other creatures, 
is a good existence for gnats and sucking fish ; but not for 
men: that neither days, nor lives, can be made holy by doing 
nothing in them: that the best prayer at the beginning of a 
day is that we may not lose its moments; and the best grace 
before meat, the consciousness that we have justly earned our 
dinner. And when we have this much of plain Christianity 
preached to us again, and enough respect for what we regard 
as inspiration, as not to think that ‘Son, go work to-day in my 
vineyard,’ means ‘Fool, go play to-day in my vineyard,’ we 
shall all be workers, in one way or another; and this much at 
least of the distinction between ‘ upper’ and ‘lower ’ forgotten. 

If. I pass then to our second distinction; between the 
rich and poor, between Dives and Lazarus,—distinction 
which exists more sternly, I suppose, in this day, than ever 
in the world, Pagan or Christian, till now. I will put it 
sharply before you, to begin with, merely by reading two 
paragraphs which I cut. from two papers that lay on my 
breakfast table on the same morning, the 25th of November, 
1864. The piece about the rich Russian at Paris is common- 
place enough, and stupid besides (for fifteen franes,— 
12s. 6d.,—is nothing for a rich man to give for a couple of 
peaches, out of season). Still, the two paragraphs printed 
on the same day are worth putting side. by side. 

‘Such a man is now here. He is a Russian, and, with 
your permission, we will call him Count Teufelskine. In 
dress he is sublime ; art is considered in that toilet, the har- 
mony of colour respected, the chiar’ oscuro evident in well- 
selected contrast. In manners he is dignified—nay, perhaps 
apathetic : nothing disturbs the placid serenity of that calm 
exterior. One day our friend breakfasted chez Bignon. 
When the bill came he read, “Two peaches, 15f.* He paid. 


WORK. 25 


** Peaches scarce, I presume?” was his sole remark. ‘No, 
sir,” replied the waiter, ‘‘but Teufeiskines are.”’ Telegraph, 
November 25, 1864. 

‘Yesterday morning, at eight o’clock, a woman, passing a 
dung heap in the stone yard near the recently-erected alms- 
houses in Shadwell Gap, High Street, Shadwell, called the at- 
tention of a Thames police-constable to a man in a sitting 
position on the dung heap, and said she was afraid he was 
dead. Her fears proved to be true. The wretched creature 
appeared to have been dead several hours. He had perished 
of cold and wet, and the rain had been beating down on him 
all night. ‘The deceased was a bone-picker. He was in the 
lowest stage of poverty, poorly clad, and half-starved. The 
police had frequently driven him away from the stone yard, 
between sunset and sunrise, and told him to go home. He 
selected a most desolate spot for his wretched death A 
penny and some bones were found in his pockets. The de- 
ceased was between fifty and sixty years of age. Inspector 
- Roberts, of the K division, has given directions for inquiries 
to be made at the lodging-houses respecting the deceased, to 
ascertain his identity if possible.—Morning Post, November 
25, 1864. 

You have the separation thus in brief compass ; and I want 
you to take notice of the ‘a penny and some bones were found 
in his pockets,’ and to compare it with this third statement, 
from the Telegraph of January 16th of this year :—. 

‘Again, the dietary scale for adult and juvenile paupers was 
drawn up by the most conspicuous political economists in 
England. It is low in quantity, but it is sufficient to support 
nature ; yet within ten years of the passing of the Poor Law 
Act, we heard of the paupers in the Andover Union gnawing 
the scraps of putrid flesh and sucking the marrow from the 
bones of horses which they were employed to crush.’ 

You see my reason for thinking that our Lazarus of Chris- 
tianity bas some advantage over the Jewish one. Jewish 
Lazarus expected, or at least prayed, to be fed with crumbs 
from the rich man’s table; but our Lazarus is fed with crumbs 
from the dog’s table. 


26 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


Now this distinction between rich and poor rests on twa 
bases. Within its proper limits, on a basis which is lawful 
and everlastingly necessary ; beyond them, on a basis unlaw- 
ful, and everlastingly corrupting the frame-work of society. 
The lawful basis of wealth is, that a man who works should 
be paid the fair value of his work; and that if he does not 
choose to spend-it to-day, he should have free leave to keep 
it, and spend it to-morrow. ‘Thus, an industrious man work- 
ing daily, and laying by daily, attains at last the possession 
of an accumulated sum of wealth, to which he has absolute 
right. The idle person who will not work, and the wasteful 
person who lays nothing by, at the end of the same time will 
be doubly poor—poor in possession, and dissolute in moral 
habit ; and he will then naturally covet the money which the 
other has saved. And if he is then allowed to attack the 
other, and rob him of his well-earned wealth, there is no more 
any motive for saving, or any reward for good conduct ; and 
all society is thereupon dissolved, or exists only in systems of 
rapine. Therefore the first necessity of social life is the clear- 
ness of national conscience in enforcing the law—that he 
should keep who has susriy EARNED. 

That law, I say, is the proper basis of distinction between 
rich and poor. But there is also a false basis of distinction ; 
namely, the power held over those who earn wealth by those 
who levy or exact it. There will be always a number of men 
who would fain set themselves to the accumulation of wealth 
as the sole object of their lives. Necessarily, that class of 
men is an uneducated class, inferior in intellect, and more or 
less cowardly. It is physically impossible for a well-educated, 
intellectual, or brave man to make money the chief object of 
his thoughts ; as physically impossible asit is for him to make 
his dinner the principal object of them. All healthy people 
like their dinners, but their dinner is not the main object of 
their lives. So all healthily minded people like making money 
—ought to like it, and to enjoy the sensation of winning it; 
but the main object of their life is not money; it is some- 
thing better than money. A good soldier, for instance, mainly 
wishes to do his fighting well. He is glad of his pay—very 


WORK. 27 


properly so, and justly grumbles when you keep him ten 
years without it—still, his main notion of life is to win battles, 
not to be paid for winning them. So of clergymen. They 
like pew-rents, and baptismal fees, of course ; but yet, if they 
are brave and well educated, the pew-rent is not the sole ob- 
ject of their lives, and the baptismal fee is not the sole pur- 
pose of the baptism ; the clergyman’s object is essentially to 
baptize and preach, not to be paid for preaching. So of doc- 
tors. They like fees no doubt,—ought to like them; yet if 
they are brave and well educated, the entire object of their 
lives is not fees. They, on the whole, desire to cure the sick ; 
and,—if they are good doctors, and the choice were fairly put. 
to them,—would rather cure their patient, and lose their fee, 
than kill him, and get it. And so with all other brave and 
rightly trained men ; their work is first, their fee second— 
very important always, but still second. But in every nation, 
as I said, there are a vast class who are ill-educated, cowardly, 
and more or less stupid. And with these people, just as cer- 
tainly the fee is first, and the work second, as with brave 
people the work is first and the fee second. And this is no 
small distinction. It is the whole distinction in a man ; dis- 
tinction between life and death in, him, between heaven and 
hell for him. You cannot serve two masters ;—you must serve 
ove or other. If your work is first with you, and your fee 
second, work is your master, and the lord of work, who is 
God. But if your fee is first with you, and your work 
second, fee is your master, and the lord of fee, who is the 
Devil; and not only the Devil, but the lowest of devils—the 
‘least erected fiend that fell.’ So there you have it in brief 
terms ; Work first—you are God’s servants ; Fee first—you 
are the Fiend’s. And it makes a difference, now and ever, 
believe me, whether you serve Him who has on His vesture 
and thigh written, ‘King of Kings,’ and whose service is per- 
fect freedom ; or him on whose vesture and thigh the name is 
written, ‘Slave of Slaves,’ and whose service is perfect slavery. 

However, in every nation there are, and must always be, a 
certain number of these Fiend’s servants, who have it princi- 
pally for the object of their lives to make money. ‘They aré 


28 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


always, as I said, more or less stupid, and cannot conceive of 
anything else so nice as money. Stupidity is always the 
basis of the Judas bargain. We do great injustice to Iscariot, 
in thinking him wicked above all common wickedness. He 
was only a common money-lover, and, like all money-lovers, 
didn’t understand Christ ;—couldn’t make out the worth of 
Him, or meaning of Him. He didn’t want Him to be killed. 
He was horror-struck when he found that Christ would be 
killed ; threw his money away instantly, and hanged himself. 
How many of our present money-seekers, think you, would 
have the grace to hang themselves, whoever was killed? But 
Judas was a common, selfish, muddle-headed, pilfering fel- 
low ; his hand always in the bag of the poor, not caring for 
them. He didn’t understand Christ ;—yet believed in Him, 
much more than most of us do; had seen Him do miracles, 
thought He was quite strong enough to shift for Himself, and 
he, Judas, might as well make his own little bye-perquisites 
out of the affair. Christ would come out of it well enough, 
and he have his thirty pieces. Now, that is the money-seek- 
er’s idea, all over the world. He doesn’t hate Christ, but 
can’t understand Him—doesn’t care for him—sees no good 
in that benevolent business ; makes his own little job out of 
it at all events, come what will. And thus, out of every mass 
of men, you have a certain number of bag-men—your ‘fee- 
first’ men, whose main object is to make money. And they 
do make it—make it in all sorts of unfair ways, chiefly by the 
weight and force of money itseif, or what is called the power 
of capital ; that is to say, the power which money, once ob- 
tained, has over the labour of the poor, so that the capitalist 
can take all its produce to himself, except the labourer’s food. 
That is the modern Judas’s way of ‘carrying the bag,’ and 
‘bearing what is put therein.’ 

Nay, but (it is asked) how is that an unfair advantage ? 
Has not the man who has worked for the money a right to 
use it as he best can? No; in this respect, money is now 
exactly what mountain promontories over public roads were 
in old times. The barons fought for them fairly :—the strong: 
est and cunningest got them; then fortified them, and made 


WORK. 29 


sveryone who passed below pay toll. Well, capital now is 
exactly what crags were then. Men fight fairly (we will, at 
least, grant so much, though it is more than we ought) for 
their money ; but, once having got it, the fortified millionaire 
can make everybody who passes below pay toll to his million, 
and build another tower of his money castle. And I can tell 
you, the poor vagrants by the roadside suffer now quite as 
much from the bag-baron, as ever they did from the crag- 
baron. Bags and crags have just the same result on rags. I 
have not time, however, to-night to show you in how many 
ways the power of capital is unjust; but this one great prin- 
ciple I have to assert—you will find it quite indisputably true 
—that whenever money is the principal object of life with 
either man or nation, it is both got ill, and spent ill; and 
does harm both in the getting and spending ; but when it is 
not the principal object, if and all other things will be well 
got, and well spent. And here is the test, with every man, 
of whether money is the principal object with him, or not. 
If in mid-life he could pause and say, ‘‘ Now I have enough to 
live upon, I'll live upon it ; and having well earned it, I will 
also well spend it, and go out of the world poor, as I came 
into it,” then money is not principal with him ; but if, having 
enough to live upon in the manner befitting his character and 
rank, he still wants to make more, and to die rich, then 
money is the principal object with him, and it becomes a 
curse to himself, and generally to those who spend it after 
him. For you know it must be spent some day; the only 
question is whether the man who makes it shall spend it, or 
some one else. And generally it is better for the maker to 
spend it, for he will know best its value and use, This is the 
true law of life. And if a man does not choose thus to spend 
his money, he must either hoard it or lend it, and the worst 
thing he can generally do is to lend it; for borrowers are 
nearly always ill-spenders, and it is with lent money that all 
evil is mainly done, and all unjust war protracted. 

For observe what the real fact is, respecting loans to for- 
eign military governments, and how‘strange it is. If your 
little boy came to you to ask for money to spend in squibs 


30 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIyvi. 


and crackers, you would think twice before you gave it him; 
and you would have some idea that it was wasted, when you 
saw it fly off in fireworks, even though he did no mischief 
with it. But the Russian children, and Austrian children, 
come to you, borrowing money, not to spend in innocent 
squibs, but in cartridges and bayonets to attack you in India 
with, and to keep down all noble life in Italy with, and to 
murder Polish women and children with; and that you wiil 
give at once, because they pay you interest for it. Now, in 
order to pay you that interest, they must tax every working 
peasant in their dominions ; and on that work you live. You 
therefore at once rob the Austrian peasant, assassinate or 
banish the Polish peasant, and you live on the produce of 
the theft, and the bribe for the assassination! That is the 
broad fact—that is the practical meaning of your foreign loans, 
and of most large interest of money ; and then you quarrel 
with Bishop Colenso, forsooth, as if he denied the Bible, and 
you believed it ! though, wretches as you are, every deliberate 
act of your lives is a new defiance of its primary orders ; and 
as if, for most of the rich men of England at this moment, it 
were not indeed to be desired, as the best thing at least for 
them, that the Bible should not be true, since against them 
these words are written in it: ‘The rust of your gold and 
silver shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh, 
as it were fire.’ 

III. I pass now to our third condition of separation, be- 
tween the men who work with the hand, and those who work 
with the head. 

And here we have at last an inevitable distinction. There 
must be work done by the arms, or none of us could live, 
There must be work done by the brains, or the life we get 
would not be worth having. And the same men cannot do 
both. There is rough work to be done, and rough men must * 
doit; there is gentle work to be done, and gentlemen must do 
it; and it is physically impossible that one class should 
do, or divide, the work of the other. And it is of no use to 
try to conceal this sorrowful fact by fine words, and to talk te 
the workman about the honourableness of manual labour. 


WORK. 31 


and the dignity of humanity. That is a grand old proverb 
of Sancho Panza’s, ‘ Fine words butter no parsnips;’ and I 
can tell you that, all over England just now, you workmen 
are buying a great deal too much butter at that dairy. Rough 
work, honourable or not, takes the life out of us ; and the man 
who has been heaving clay out of a ditch all day, or driving 
an express train against the north wind all night, or hold- 
ing a collier’s helm in a gale on a lee-shore, or whirling white 
hot iron at a furnace mouth, that man is not the same at the 
end of his day, or night, as one who has been sitting in a quiet 
room, with everything comfortable about him, reading books, 
or classing butterflies, or painting pictures. If it is any com- 
fort to you to be told that the rough work is the more hon- 
ourable of the two, I should be sorry to take that much of 
consolation from you; and in some sense JI need not. ‘The 
rough work is at all events real, honest, and, generally, though 
not always, useful; while the fine work is, a great deal of it, 
foolish and false as well as fine, and therefore dishonourable ; 
but when both kinds are equally well and worthily done, the 
head’s is the noble work, and the hand’s the ignoble ; and of 
all hand work whatsoever, necessary for the maintenance of 
life, those old words, ‘In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat 
bread,’ indicate that the inherent nature of it is one of calam- 
ity ; and that the ground, cursed for our sake, casts also 
some shadow of degradation into our contest with its thorn 
and its thistle ; so that all nations have held their days hon- 
ourable, or ‘holy,’ and constituted them ‘holydays’ or ‘holi- 
days,’ by making them days of rest ; and the promise, which, 
among all our distant hopes, seems to cast the chief bright- 
ness over death, is that blessing of the dead who die in the 
Lord, that ‘they rest from their labours, and their works do 
follow them.’ 
And thus the perpetual question and contest must arise, 
who is to do this rough work? and how is the worker of it 
to be comforted, redeemed, and rewarded ? and what kind of 
play should he have, and what rest, in this world, sometimes, 
as well as in the next? Well, my good working friends, 
these questions will take a little time to answer yet. They 


32 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


must be answered: all good men are occupied with them, 
and all honest thinkers. There’s grand head work doing 
about them ; but much must be discovered, and much at- 
tempted in vain, before anything decisive can be told you. 
Only note these few particulars, which are already sure. 

As to the distribution of the hard work. None of us, or 
very few of us, do either hard or soft work because we think 
we ought ; but because we have chanced to fall into the way 
of it, and cannot help ourselves. Now, nobody does anything 
well that they cannot help doing: work is only done well 
when it is done with a will; and no man has a thoroughly 
sound will unless he knows he is doing what he should, and 
is in his place. And, depend upon it, all work must be done 
at last, not in a disorderly, scrambling, doggish way, but in 
an ordered, soldierly, human way—a lawful way. Men are en- 
listed for the labour that kills—the labour of war: they are 
counted, trained, fed, dressed, and praised for that. Let them 
be enlisted also for the labour that feeds: let them be counted, 
trained, fed, dressed, praised for that. Teach the plough ex- 
ercise as carefully as you do the sword exercise, and let the 
officers of troops of life be held as much gentlemen as the 
officers of troops of death ; and all is done: but neither this, 
nor any other right thing, can be accomplished—you can’t 
even see your way to it—unless, first of all, both servant and 
master are resolved that, come what will of it, they will do 
each other justice. People are perpetually squabbling about 
what will be best to do, or easiest to do, or adviseablest to do, 
or profitablest to do; but they never, so far as I hear them 
talk, ever ask what it is just to do. And it is the law of 
heaven that you shall not be able to judge what is wise or 
easy, unless you are first resolved to judge what is just, and 
to do it. That is the one thing constantly reiterated by our 
Master—the order of all others that is given oftenest—‘ Do 
justice and judgment.’ That’s your Bible order ; that’s the 
‘Service of God,’ not praying nor psalm-singing. You are 
told, indeed, to sing psalms when you are merry, and to pray 
when you need anything ; and, by the perversion of the Evil 
Spirit, we get to think that praying and psalm-singing are 


WORK. 33 


‘service.’ Ifa child finds itself in want of anything, it runs 
in and asks its father for it—does it call that, doing its father 
a service? If it begs for a toy or a piece of cake—does it 
call that serving its father? That, with God, is prayer, and 
He likes to hear it: He likes you to ask Him for cake when 
you want it; but He doesn’t call that ‘serving Him.’ Beg- 
ging is not serving: God likes mere beggars as little as you 
do—He likes honest servants, not beggars. So when a child 
loves its father very much, and is very happy, it may sing 
little songs about him ; but it doesn’t call that serving its 
father ; neither is singing songs about God, serving God. It 
is enjoying ourselves, if it’s anything; most probably it is 
nothing ; but ifit’s anything, it is serving ourselves, not God. 
And yet we are impudent enough to call our beggines and 
chauntings ‘ Divine Service :’ we say ‘ Divine service will be 
‘performed ”’ (that’s our word—the form of it gone through) 
‘at eleven o’clock.’ Alas!—unless we perform Divine service 
in every willing act of our life, we never perform it at all. 
The one Divine work—the one ordered sacrifice—is to do 
justice ; and it is the last we are ever inclined to do. Any- 
thing rather than that! As much charity as you choose, but 
no justice. ‘Nay,’ you will say, ‘charity is greater than jus- 
tice.’ Yes, it is greater; it is the summit of justice—it is the 
temple of which justice is the foundation. But you can’t have 
the top without the bottom ; you cannot build upon charity. 
You must build upon justice, for this main reason, that you 
have not, at first, charity to build with. Itis the last reward 
of good work. Do justice to your brother (you can do that, 
whether you love him or not), and you will come to love him. 
But do injustice to him, because you don’t love him; and 
you will come to hate him. It is all very fine to think you 
can build upon charity to begin with; but you will find all 
you have got to begin with, begins at home, and is essentially 
love of yourself. You well-to-do people, for instance, who 
are here to-night, will go to ‘Divine service’ next Sunday, 
all nice and tidy, and your little children will have their tight 
little Sunday boots on, and lovely little Sunday feathers in » 
their hats ; and you'll think, complacently and piously, how 
3 


34 THH CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


lovely they look! So they do: and you love them heartily, 
and you like sticking feathers in their hats. That’s all right; 
that is charity ; but it is charity beginning at home. Then 
you will come to the poor little crossing-sweeper, got up also, 
—it, in its Sunday dress,—the dirtiest rags it has,—that it 
may beg the better: we shall give it a penny, and think how. 
good we are. ‘That’s charity going abroad. But what does 
Justice say, walking and watching near us? Christian Jus- 
tice has been strangely mute, and seemingly blind; and, if 
not blind, decrepit, this many a day: she keeps her accounts 
still, however—quite steadily—doing them at nights, care- 
fully, with her bandage off, and through acutest spectacles 
(the only modern scientific invention she cares about). You 
must put your ear down ever so close to her lips to hear her 
speak ; and then you will start at what she first whispers, for 
it will certainly be, ‘ Why shouldn’t that little crossing-sweeper 
have a feather on its head, as well as your own child?’ Then 
you may ask Justice, in an amazed manner, ‘How she can 
possibly be so foolish as to think children could sweep cross- 
ings with feathers on their heads?’ Then you stoop again, 
and Justice says—still in her dull, stupid way—‘Then, why 
don’t you, every other Sunday, leave your child to sweep the 
crossing, and take the little sweeper to church in a hat and 
feather?’ Mercy on us (you think), what will she say next? 
And you answer, of course, that ‘you don’t, because every 
body ought to remain content in the position in which Prov- 
idence has placed them.’ Ah, my friends, that’s the gist of 
the whole question. Did Providence put them in that posi- 
tion, or did you? You knock a man into a ditch, and then 
you tell him to remain content in the ‘position in which 
Providence has placed him.’ That's modern Christianity. 
You say—‘ We did not knock him into the ditch.’ How do 
you know what you have done, or are doing? That’s just 
what we have all got to know, and what we shall never know, 
until the question with us every morning, is, not how to do 
the gainful thing, but how to do the just thing; nor until we 
~are at least so far on the way to being Christian, as to have 
understood that maxim of the poor half-way Mahometan, 


WORK. 35 


‘One hour in the execution of justice is worth seventy years 
of prayer.’ 

Supposing, then, we have it determined with appropriate 
justice, who is to do the hand work, the next questions must 
be how the hand-workers are to be paid, and how they are 
to be refreshed, and what play they are to have. Now, the 
possible quantity of play depends on the possible quantity of 
pay; and the quantity of pay is not a matter for considera- 
tion to hand-workers only, but to all workers. Generally, 
good, useful work, whether of the hand or head, is either ill- 
paid, or not paid at all. I don’t say it should be so, but it 
always is so. People, as a rule, only pay for being amused or 
being cheated, not for being served. Five thousand a year 
to your talker, and a shilling a day to your fighter, digger, 
and thinker, is the rule. None of the best head work in art, 
literature, or science, is ever paid for. How much do you 
think Homer got for his Iliad? or. Dante for his Paradise ? 
only bitter bread and salt, and going up and down other peo- 
ple’s stairs. In science, the man who discovered the tele- 
scope, and first saw heaven, was paid with a dungeon; the 
man who invented the microscope, and first saw earth, died 
of starvation, driven from his home: it is indeed very clear 
that God means all thoroughly good work and talk to be 
done for nothing. Baruch, the scribe, did not get a penny a 
line for writing Jeremiah’s second roll for him, I fancy ; and 
St. Stephen did not get bishop’s pay for that long sermon of 
his to the Pharisees ; nothing but stones. Jor indeed that is 
the world-father’s proper payment. So surely as any of the 
world’s children work for the world’s good, honestly, with 
head and heart; and come to it, saying, ‘Give us a little 
bread, just to keep the life in us,’ the world-father answers 
them, ‘No, my children, not bread; a stone, if you like, or as 
many as you need, to keep you quiet.’ But the hand-workers 
are not so illoff as all this comes to. The worst that can hap- 
pen to you is to break stones ; not be broken by them. And 
for you there will come a time for better payment ; some day, 
assuredly, more pence will be paid to Peter the Fisherman, 
and fewer to Peter the Pope ; we shall pay people not quite 


36 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


so much for talking in Parliament and doing nothing, as for 
holding their tongues out of it and doing something; we 
shall pay our ploughman a little more and our lawyer a little 
less, and so on: but, at least, we may even now take care 
that whatever work is done shall be fully paid for; and the 
man who does it paid for it, not somebody else; and that it 
shall be done in an orderly, soldierly, well-guided, wholesome 
way, under good captains and lieutenants of labour ; and that 
it shall have its appointed times of rest, and enough of them ; 
and that in those times the play shall be wholesome play, not 
in theatrical gardens, with tin flowers and gas sunshine, and 
girls dancing because of their misery ; but in true gardens, 
with real flowers, and real sunshine, and children dancing be- 
cause of their gladness ; so that truly the streets shall be full 
(the ‘streets,’ mind you, not the gutters) of children, playing 
in the midst thereof. We may take care that working-men 
shall have at least as good books to read as anybody else, 
when they’ve time to read them ; and as comfortable firesides 
to sit at as anybody else, when they've time to sit at them. 
This, I think, can be managed for you, my working friends, 
in the good time. 

IV. I must go on, however, to our last head, concerning 
ourselves all, as workers. What is wise work, and what is 
foolish work? What the difference between sense and non- 
sense, in daily occupation ? 

Well, wise work is, briefly, work with God. Foolish work 
is work against God. And work done with God, which He 
will help, may be briefly described as ‘Putting in Order ’"— 
that is, enforcing God’s law of order, spiritual and material, 
over men and things. The first thing you have to do, essen- 
tially ; the real ‘good work’ is, with respect to men, to en- 
force justice, and with respect to things, to enforce tidiness, 
and fruitfulness. And against these two great human deeds, 
justice and order, there are perpetually two great demons 
contending,—the devil of iniquity, or inequity, amd the devil 
of disorder, or of death; for death is only consummation of 
disorder. You have to fight these two fiends daily. So far 
as you don’t fight against the fiend of iniquity, you work for 


WORK. 37 


him. You ‘work iniquity,’ and the judgment upon you, for 
all your ‘ Lord, Lord’s,’ will he ‘Depart from me, ye that work 
iniquity.’ And so far as you do not resist the fiend of disor- 
der, you work disorder, and you yourself do the work of 
Death, which is sin, and has for its wages, Death himself. 

Observe then, all wise work is mainly threefold in charac- 
ter. Itis honest, useful, and cheerful. 

I. It is uonesr. I hardly know anything more strange than 
that you recognise honesty in play, and you do not in work. 
in your lightest games, you have always some one to see 
what you call ‘fair-play.’ In boxing, you must hit fair; in 
racing, start fair. Your English watchword is fair-play, your 
English hatred, foul-play. Did it ever strike you that you 
wanted another watchword also, fair-work, and another hatred 
also, foul-work? Your prize-fighter has some honour in him 
yet; and so have the men in the ring round him: they will 
judge him to lose the match, by foul hitting. But your 
prize-merchant gains his match by foul selling, and no one 
cries out against that. You drive a gambler out of the gam- 
bling-room who loads dice, but you leave a tradesman in flour- 
ishing business, who loads scales! or observe, all dishonest 
dealing is loading scales. What does it matter whether I get 
short weight, adulterate substance, or dishonest fabric? The 
fault in the fabric is incomparably the worst of the two. 
Give me short measure of food, and I only lose by you; but 
give me adulterate food, and I die by you. Here, then, is 
your chief duty, you workmen and tradesmen—to be true to 
yourselves, and to us who would help you. We can do nothing 
for you, nor you for yourselves, without honesty. Get that, 
you get all; without that, your suffrages, your reforms, your 
free-trade measures, your institutions of science, are all in 
vain. It is useless to put your heads together, if you can’t 
put your hearts together. Shoulder to shoulder, right hand 
to right hand, among yourselves, and no wrong hand to any- 
body else, and you'll win the world yet. 

I. Then, secondly, wise work is usrerut. No man minds, 
or ought to mind, its being hard, if only it comes to some- 
thing ; but when it is hard, and comes to nothing ; when all 


38 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


our bees’ business turns to spiders’ ; and for honey-comb we 
have only resultant cobweb, blown away by the next breeze— 
that is the cruel thing for the worker. Yet do we ever ask 
ourselves, personally, or even nationally, whether our work is 
coming to anything or not? We don’t care to keep what has 
been nobly done; still less do we care to do nobly what 
others would keep ; and, least of all, to make the work itself 
useful instead of deadly to the doer, so as to use his life in- 
deed, but not to waste it. Of all wastes, the greatest waste 
that you can commit is the waste of labour. If you went 
down in the morning into your dairy, and you found that 
your youngest child had got down before you; and that he 
and the cat were at play together, and that he had poured out 
all the cream on the floor for the cat to lap up, you would 
scold the child, and be sorry the milk was wasted. But if, 
instead of wooden bowls with milk in them, there are golden 
bowls with human life in them, and instead of the cat to play 
with—the devil to play with; and you yourself the player ; 
and instead of leaving that golden bowl to be broken by God 
at the fountain, you break it in the dust yourself, and pour 
the human blood out on the ground for the fiend to lick up— 
that is no waste! What! you perhaps think, ‘to waste the la- 
bour of men is not to kill them.’ Is it not? I should like ta 
know how you could kill them more utterly—kill them with 
second deaths, seventh deaths, hundredfold deaths? Itis the 
slightest way of killing to stop a man’s breath. Nay, the hun-« 
ger, and the cold, and the little whistling bullets—our love-mes- 
sengers between nation and nation—have brought pleasant 
messages from us to many a man before now; orders of sweet 
release, and leave at last to go where he will be most welcome 
and most happy. At the worst you do but shorten his life, 
you do not corrupt his life. But if you put him to base la- 
bour, if you bind his thoughts, if you blind his eyes, if you 
blunt his hopes, if you steal his joys, if you stunt his body, 
and blast his soul, and at last leave him not so much as to 
reap the poor fruit of his degradation, but gather that for 
yourself, and dismiss him to the grave, when you have done 
with him, having, so far as in you lay, made the walls of that 


WORK. 3g 


grave everlasting (though, indeed, I fancy the goodly bricka 
of some of our family vaults will hold closer in the resurrece- 
tion day than the sod over the labourer’s head), this you think 
is no waste, and no sin! 

Ut. Then, lastly, wise work is cuEEerrutL, as a child’s work 
is. And now I want you to take one thought home with you, 
and let it stay with you. 

Everybody in this room has been taught to pray daily, ‘Thy 
kingdom come.’ Now, if we hear a man swear in the streets, 
we think it very wrong, and say he ‘takes God’s name in vain.’ 
But there’s a twenty times worse way of taking His name in 
vain, than that. It is to ask God for what we don't want. He 
doesn’t like that sort of prayer. If you don’t want a thing, 
don’t ask for it: such asking is the worst mockery of your 
King you can mock Him with ; the soldiers striking Him on 
the head with the reed was nothing to that. If you do not 
wish for His kingdom, don’t pray for it. But if you do, you 
must do more than pray for it; you must work for it. And, 
to work for it, you must know what it is: we have all prayed 
for it many a day without thinking. Observe, it is a kingdom 
that is to come to us; we are not to go to it. Also, itis not to 
be a kingdom of the dead, but of the living. Also, it is not 
to come all at once, but quietly ; nobody knows how. ‘The 
kingdom of God cometh not with observation.’ Also, it is not 
to come outside of us, but in the hearts of us: ‘the kingdom 
of God is within you.’ And, being within us, it is not a thing 
to be seen, but to be felt ; and though it brings all substance 
of good with it, it does not consist in that: ‘the kingdom of 
God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, peace, and joy 
in the Holy Ghost :’ joy, that is to say, in the holy, healthful, 
and helpful Spirit. Now, if we want to work for this kingdom, 
and to bring it, and enter into it, there’s just one condition to 
be first accepted. You must enter it as children, or not at 
all ; ‘ Whosoever will not receive it as a little child shall not 
enter therein.’ And again, ‘Suffer little children to come 
unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of 
heaven.’ 

Of such, observe. Not of children themselves, but of such 


40 THE UROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


as children. I believe most mothers who read that text think 
that all heaven is to be full of babies. But that’s not so. 
There will be children there, but the hoary head is the crown. 
‘Length of days, and long life and peace,’ that is the blessing, 
not to die in babyhood. Children die but for their parents’ 
sins ; God means them to live, but He can’t let them always; 
then they have their earlier place in heaven: and the little 
child of David, vainly prayed for ;—the little child of Jero- 
boam, killed by its mother’s step on its own threshold,—they 
will be there. But weary old David, and weary old Barzillai, 
having learned children’s lessons at last, will be there too: 
and the one question for us all, young or old, is, have we 
learned our child’s lesson? if is the character of children we 
want, and must gain at our peril ; let us see, briefly, in what 
it consists. 

The first character of right childhood is that it is Modest. A 
well-bred child does not think it can teach its parents, or that 
it knows everything. It may think its father and mother 
know everything,—perhaps that all grown-up people know 
everything ; very certainly it is sure that 7 does not. And it 
is always asking questions, and wanting to know more. Well, 
that is the first character of a good and wise man at his work. 
To know that he knows very little ;—to perceive that there 
are many above him wiser than he; and to be always asking 
questions, wanting to learn, not to teach. No one ever teaches 
well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern; 
it is an old saying (Plato’s, but I know not if his, first), and as 
wise as old. 

Then, the second character of right childhood is to be Faith- 
ful. Perceiving that its father knows best what is good for it, 
and having found always, when it has tried its own way against 
his, that he was right and it was wrong, a noble child trusts 
him at last wholly, gives him its hand, and will walk blindfold 
with him, if he bids it. And that is the true character of all 
good men also, as obedient workers, or soldiers under cap- 
tains. They must trust their captains ;—they are bound for 
their lives to choose none but those whom they can trust. 
Then, they are not always to be thinking that what seems 


WORK. 41 


strange to them, or wrong in what they are desired to do, is 
strange or wrong. They know their captain: where he leads 
they must follow, what he bids, they must do; and without 
- this trust and faith, without this captainship and soldiership, 
no great deed, no great salvation, is possible to man. Among 
all the nations it is only when this faith is attained by them 
that they become great: the Jew, the Greek, and the Mahome- 
tan, agree at least in testifying to this. It was a deed of this 
absolute trust which made Abraham the father of the faithful; 
it was the declaration of the power of God as captain over all 
men, and the acceptance of a leader appointed by Him as 
commander of the faithful, which laid the foundation of what- 
ever national power yet exists in the Hast; and the deed of 
the Greeks, which has become the type of unselfish and noble 
soldiership to all Jands, and to all times, was commemorated, 
on the tomb of those who gave their lives to do it, in the most 
pathetic, so far as I know, or can feel, of all human utterances: 
‘Oh, stranger, go and tell our people that we are lying here, 
having obeyed their words.’ 

Then the third character of right childhood is to be Loving 
and Generous. Give a little love to a child, and you geta 
great deal back. It loves everything near it, when it is a right 
kind of child—would hurt nothing, would give the best it has 
away, always, if you need it—does not lay plans for getting 
everything in the house for itself, and delights in helping 
people; you cannot please it so much as by giving it a chance 
of being useful, in ever so little a way. 

And because of all these characters, lastly, it is Cheerful. 
Putting its trust in its father, it is careful for nothing—be- 
ing full of love to every creature, it is happy always, whether 
in its play or in its duty. Well, that’s the great worker’s 
character also. Taking no thought for the morrow; taking 
thought only for the duty of the day ; trusting somebody else 
to take care of to-morrow ; knowing indeed what labour is, 
but not what sorrow is; and always ready for play—beautiful 
play,—for lovely human play is like the play of the Sun. 
There’s a worker for you. He, steady to his time, is set as 
a strong man to run his course, but also, he rejoice/h as a 


49 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 4 


strong man to run his course. See how he plays in the 
morning, with the mists below, and the clouds above, with a 
ray here and a flash there, and a shower of jewels everywhere ; 
that’s the Sun’s play ; and great human play is like his—all 
various—all full of light and life, and tender, as the dew of 
the morning. 

So then, you have the child’s character in these four things 
—Humility, Faith, Charity, and Cheerfulness. That's what 
you have got to be converted to. ‘Hxcept ye be converted 
and become as little children ’—You hear much of conversion 
now-a-days; but people always seem to think they have got 
to be made wretched by conversion,—to be converted to long 
faces. No, friends, you have got to be converted to short 
ones ; you have to repent into childhood, to repent into de- 
light, and delightsomeness. You can’t go into a conventicle 
but you'll hear plenty of talk of backsliding. Backsliding, 
indeed! I can tell you, on the ways most of us go, the faster 
we slide back the better. Slide back into the cradle, if going 
on is into the grave—back, I tell you; back—out of your 
long faces, and into your long clothes. Itis among children 
only, and as children only, that you will find medicine for 
your healing and true wisdom for your teaching. ‘There is 
poison in the counsels of the men of this world ; the words 
they speak are all bitterness, ‘the poison of asps is under 
their lips,’ but, ‘the sucking child shall play by the hole of 
the asp.’ There is death in the looks of men. ‘Their eyes 
are privily set against the poor ;’ they are as the uncharmable 
serpent, the cockatrice, which slew by seeing. But ‘the weaned 
child shall lay his hand on the cockatrice den.’ There is 
death in the steps of men: ‘their feet are swift to shed 
blood ; they have compassed us in our steps like the lion that 
is greedy of his prey, and the young lion lurking in secret 
places,’ but, in that kingdom, the wolf shall lie down with the 
lamb, and the fatling with the lion, and ‘a little child shall 
lead them.’ There is death in the thoughts of men: the 
world is one wide riddle to them, darker and darker as it 
draws to a close; but the secret of it is known to the child, 
and the Lord of heaven and earth is most to be thanked in 


WORK. 43 


that ‘He has hidden these things from the wise and prudent, 
and has revealed them unto babes.’ Yes, and there is death 
—ainfinitude of death in the principalities and powers of men. 
As far as the east is from the west, so far our sins are—not 
set from us, but multiphed around us: the Sun himself, 
think you he now ‘rejoices’ to run his course, when he 
plunges westward to the horizon, so widely red, not with 
clouds, but blood? And it will be red more widely yet. 
Whatever drought of the early and latter rain may be, there 
will be none of that red rain. You fortify yourselves, you 
arm yourselves against it in vain; the enemy and avenger 
will be upon you also, unless you learn that it is not out of the 
mouths of the knitted gun, or the smoothed rifle, but ‘out of 
the mouths of babes and sucklings’ that the strength is or- 
dained, which shall ‘still the enemy and avenger.’ 


LECTURE If. 


TRALFIC. 


(Delivered in the Town Hall, Bradford.) 


My good Yorkshire friends, you asked me down here among 
your hills that I might talk to you about this Exchange you 
are going to build: but earnestly and seriously asking you to 
pardon me, I am going to do nothing of the kind. I cannot 
talk, or at least can say very little, about this same Exchange. 
I must talk of quite other things, though not willingly ;—I 
could not deserve your pardon, if when you invited me to 
speak on one subject, I wilfully spoke on another. But I 
cannot speak, to purpose, of anything about which I do not 
care; and most simply and sorrowfully I have to tell you, in 
the outset, that I do not care about this Exchange of yours. 

If, however, when you sent me your invitation, I had an- 
swered, ‘I won’t come, I don’t care about the Exchange of 
Bradford,’ you would have been justly offended with me, not 
knowing the reasons of so blunt a carelessness. So I have 
come down, hoping that you will patiently let me tell you 
why, on this, and many other such occasions, I now remain 
silent, when formerly I should have caught at the opportunity 
of speaking to a gracious audience. 

In a word, then, I do not care about this Exchange,—be- 
cause you don’t ; and because you know perfectly well I can- 
not make you. Look at the essential circumstances of the 
case, which you, as business men, know perfectly well, though 
perhaps you think I forget them. You are going to spend 
30,000/., which to you, collectively, is nothing ; the buying a 
new coat is, as to the cost of it, a much more important 
matter of consideration to me than building a new Exchanga 


TRAFFIC. 45 


is to you. But you think you may as well have the right 
thing for your money. You know there are a great many 
odd styles of architecture about; you don’t want to do any- 
thing ridiculous ; you hear of me, among others, as a respect- 
able architectural man-milliner: and you send for me, that I 
may tell you the leading fashion ; and what is, in our shops, 
for the moment, the newest and sweetest thing in pinnacles. 

Now, pardon me for telling you frankly, you cannot have 
good architecture merely by asking people’s advice on occa- 
sion. All good architecture is the expression of national life 
and character; and it is produced by a prevalent and eager 
national taste, or desire for beauty. And I want you to think 
a little of the deep significance of this word ‘taste ;’ for no 
statement of mine has been more earnestiy or oftener contro- 
verted than that good taste is essentially a moral quality. 
‘No,’ say many of my antagonists, ‘ taste is one thing, moral- 
ity is another. Tell us what is pretty ; we shall be glad to 
know that ; but preach no sermons to us.’ 

Permit me, therefore, to fortify this old dogma of mine 
somewhat. ‘Taste is not only a part and an index of morality 
—it isthe onty morality. The first, and last, and closest trial 
question to any living creature is, ‘What do you like?’ Tell 
me what you like, and Ill tell you what you are. Go out 
into the street, and ask the first man or woman you meet, 
what their ‘ taste’ is, and if they answer candidly, you know 
them, body and soul. ‘ You, my friend in the rags, with the 
unsteady gait, what do you like?’ ‘A pipe and a quartern of 
gin. I know you. ‘ You, good woman, with the quick step 
and tidy bonnet, what do you like?’ ‘A swept hearth and 
a clean tea-table, and my husband opposite me, and a baby 
at my breast.’ ~Good, I know you also. ‘ You, little girl with 
the golden hair and the soft eyes, what do youlike?’ ‘My 
canary, and a run among the wood hyacinths.’ ‘ You, little 
boy with the dirty hands and the low forehead, what do you 
like?’ ‘A shy at the sparrows, and a game at pitch-farthing. 
Good ; we know them all now. What more need we ask ? 

‘Nay,’ perhaps you answer: ‘we need rather to ask what 
these people and children do, than what they like. If they do 


46 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


right, it is no matter that they like what is wrong; and if 
they do wrong, it is no matter that they like what is right. 
Doing is the great thing ; and it does not matter that the 
man likes drinking, so that he does not drink; nor that the 
little girl likes to be kind to her canary, if she will not learn 
her lessons ; nor that the little boy likes throwing stones at 
the sparrows, if he goes to the Sunday school.’ Indeed, for 
a short time, and in a provisional sense, this is true. Tor if, 
resolutely, people do what is right, in time they come to like 
doing it. But they only are in a right moral state when they 
have come to like doing it ; and as long as they don’t like it, 
they are still in a vicious state. The man is not in health of 
body who is always thirsting for the bottle in the cupboard, 
though he bravely bears his thirst ; but the man who heartily 
enjoys water in the morning and wine in the evening, each 
in its proper quantity and time. And the entire object of 
true education is to make people not merely do the right 
things, but enjoy the right things—not merely industrious, 
but to love industry—not merely learned, but to love know- 
ledge—not merely pure, but to love purity—not merely just, 
but to hunger and thirst after justice. 7 

But you may answer or think, ‘Is the liking for outside 
ornaments,—for pictures, or statues, or furniture, or archi- 
tecture,—a moral quality?’ Yes, most surely, if a rightly 
set liking. Taste for any pictures or statues is not a moral 
quality, but taste for good ones is. Only here again we have 
to define the word ‘good.’ I don’t mean by ‘good,’ clever 
—or learned—or difficult in the doing. Take a picture by 
Teniers, of sots quarrelling over their dice: it is an entirely 
clever picture ; so clever that nothing in its kind has ever 
been done equal to it ; but it is also an entirely base and evil 
picture. It is an expression of delight in the prolonged con- 
templation of a vile thing, and delight in that is an ‘ unman- 
nered,’ or ‘immoral’ quality. It is ‘bad taste’ in the pro- 
foundest sense—it is the taste of the devils. On the other 
hand, a picture of Titian’s, or a Greek statue, or a Greek 
coin, or a Turner landscape, expresses delight in the per- 
petual contemplation of a good and perfect thing. That is 


TRAFFIC. 47 


an entirely moral quality—it is the taste of the angels. Ane 
all delight in art, and all love of it, resolve themselves into 
simple love of that which deserves love. That deserving is 
the quality which we call ‘loveliness’—(we ought to have an 
opposite word, hateliness, to be said of the things which de- 
serve to be hated) ; and it is not an indifferent nor optional 
thing whether we love this or that; but it is just the vital 
function of all our being. What we like determines what we 
are, and is the sign of what we are; and to teach taste is in- 
evitably to form character. As I was thinking over this, in 
walking up Fleet Street the other day, my eye caught the title 
of a book standing open in a bookseller’s window. It was—— 
‘On the necessity of the diffusion of taste among all classes.’ 
‘Ah, I thought to myself, ‘my classifying friend, when you 
have diffused your taste, where will your classes be? The 
man who likes what you like, belongs to the same class with 
you, I think. Inevitably so. You may put him to other 
work if you choose ; but, by the condition you have brought 
him into, he will dislike the other work as much as you would 
yourself. You get hold of a scavenger, or a costermonger, 
who enjoyed the Newgate Calendar for literature, and ‘“ Pop 
goes the Weasel” for music. You think you can make him 
like Dante and Beethoven? I wish you joy of your lessons ; 
but if you do, you have made a gentleman of him :—he won't 
jike to go back to his costermongering.’ 

And so completely and unexceptionally is this so, that, if 
{ had time to-night, I could show you that a nation cannot be 
affected by any vice, or weakness, without expressing it, legi- 
bly, and for ever, either in bad art, or by want of art; and 
that there is no national virtue, small or great, which is not 
manifestly expressed in all the art which circumstances en- 
able the people possessing that virtue to produce. Take, for 
instance, your great Enelish virtue of enduring and patient 
courage. You have at present in England only one art of 
any consequence—that is, iron-working. You know thor- 
oughly well how to cast and hammer iron. Now, do you 
think in those masses of lava which you build volcanic cones 
to melt, and which you forge at the mouths of the Infernos 


48 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


you have created ; do you think, on those iron plates, yout 
courage and endurance are not written for ever—not merely 
with an iron pen, but on iron parchment? And take also 
your great English vice—Kuropean vice—vice of all the world 
—vice of all other worlds that roll or shine in heaven, bearing 
with them yet the atmosphere of hell—the vice of jealousy, 
which brings competition into your commerce, treachery into 
your councils, and dishonour into your wars—that vice which 
has rendered for you, and for your next neighbouring nation, 
the daily occupations of existence no longer possible, but 
with the mail upon your breasts and the sword loose in its 
sheath ; so that, at last, you have realised for all the multi- 
tudes of the two great peoples who lead the so-called civilisa- 
tion of the earth,—you have realised for them all, I say, in 
person and in policy, what was once true only of the rough 
Border riders of your Cheviot hills— 


‘They carved at the meal 
With gloves of steel, 
And they drank the red wine through the helmet barr’d ;— 


do you think that this national shame and dastardliness of 
heart are not written as legibly on every rivet of your iron 
armour as the strength of the right hands that forged it? 
Friends, I know not whether this thing be the more ludicrous 
or the more melancholy. It is quite unspeakably both. Sup- 
pose, instead of being now sent for by you, I had been sent 
for by some private gentleman, living in a suburban house, 
with his garden separated only by a fruit-wall from his next 
door neighbour’s ; and he had called me to consult with him 
on the furnishing of his drawing room. I begin looking 
about me, and find the walls rather bare; I think such and 
such a paper might be desirable—perhaps a little fresco here 
and there on the ceiling—a damask curtain or so at the win- 
dows. ‘Ah,’ says my employer, ‘damask curtains, indeed! 
That’s all very fine, but you know I can’t afford that kind of 
thing just now!’ ‘Yet the world credits you with a splendid 
income!’ ‘Ah, yes,’ says my friend, ‘but do you know, at 


TRAFFIC. 49 


present, I am obliged to spend it nearly all in steel-traps?’ 
‘Steel-traps! for whom?’ ‘Why, for that fellow on the 
other side the wall, you know: we're very good friends, capi- 
tal friends; but we are obliged to keep our traps set on both 
sides of the wall; we could not possibly keep on friendly 
terms without them, and our spring guns. The worst of it 
is, we are both clever fellows enough ; and there’s never a day 
passes that we don’t find out a new trap, or a new gun-bar- 
rel, or something ; we spend about fifteen millions a year each 
in our traps, take it all together ; and I don’t see how we're to 
do with less.’ A highly comic state of life for two private 
gentlemen! but for two nations, it seems to me, not wholly 
comic? Bedlam would be comic, perhaps, if there were only 
sne madman init; and your Christmas pantomime is comic, 
when there is only one clown in it; but when the whole 
world turns clown, and paints itself red with its own heart's 
vlood instead of vermilion, it is something else than comic, 
A think. 

Mind, I know a great deal of this is play, and willingly al- 
low for that. You don’t know what to do with yourselves for 
a sensation: fox-hunting and cricketing will not carry you 
through the whole of this unendurably long mortal life: you 
liked pop-guns when you were schoolboys, and rifles and 
Armstrongs are only the same things better made: but then 
the worst of it is, that what was play to you when boys, was 
not play to the sparrows ; and what is play to you now, is not 
play to the small birds of State neither ; and for the black 
eagles, you are somewhat shy of taking shots at them, if I 
mistake not. 

I must get back to the matter in hand, however. Believe 
me, without farther instance, I could show you, in all time, 
that every nation’s vice, or virtue, was written in its art: the 
soldiership of early Greece ; the sensuality of late Italy ; the 
visionary religion of Tuscany; the splendid human energy 
and beauty of Venice. I have no time to do this to-night (I 
have done it elsewhere before now); but I proceed to apply 
the principle to ourselves in a more searching manner. 

I notice that among all the new buildings that cover your 

4 


50 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


once wild hills, churches and schools are mixed in due, that 
is to say, in large proportion, with your mills and mansions 

and I notice also that the churches and schools are almost 
always Gothic, and the mansions and mills are never Gothic. 
Will you allow me to ask precisely the meaning of this? For, 
remember, it is peculiarly a modern phenomenon. When 
Gothic was invented, houses were Gothic as well as churches; 
and when the Italian style superseded the Gothic, churches 
were Italian as well as houses. If there is a Gothic spire 
to the cathedral of Antwerp, there is a Gothic belfry to the 
Hotel de Ville at Brussels ; if Inigo Jones builds an Italian 
Whitehall, Sir Christopher Wren builds an Italian St. Paul’s. 
But now you live under one school of architecture, and wor- 
ship under another. What do you mean by doing this? Am 
I to understand that you are thinking of changing your archi- 
tecture back to Gothic ; and that you treat your churches ex- 
perimentally, because it does not matter what mistakes you 
make in a church? Or am I to understand that you con- 
sider Gothic a pre-eminently sacred and beautiful mode of 
building, which you think, like the fine frankincense, should 
be mixed for the tabernacle only, and reserved for your reli- 
gious services? For if this be the feeling, though it may 
seem at first as if it were graceful and reverent, you will find 
that, at the root of the matter, it signifies neither more nor 
less than that you have separated your religion from your 
life. 

For consider what a wide significance this fact has; and re- 
member that it is not you only, but all the people of England, 
who are behaving thus just now. 

You have all got into the habit of calling the church ‘the 
house of God.’ I have seen, over the doors of many churches, 
the legend actually carved, ‘ This is the house of God, and 
this is the gate of heaven.’ Now, note where that legend 
comes from, and of what place it was first spoken. A boy 
ieaves his father’s house to go on a long journey on foot, to 
visit his uncle ; he has to cross a wild hill-desert ; just as if 
one of your own boys had to cross the wolds of Westmore- 
land, to visit an uncle at Carlisle. The second or third day 


TRAFFIC. 51 


your boy finds himself somewhere between Hawes and 
Brough, in the midst of the moors, at sunset. It is stony 
ground, and boggy; he cannot go one foot farther that 
night. Down he lies, to sleep, on Wharnside, where best he 
may, gathering a few of the stones together to put under his 
head ;—so wild the place is, he cannot get anything but stones. 
And there, lying under the broad night, he has a dream ; and 
he sees a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reaches 
to heaven, and the angels of God are ascending and descend- 
ing upon it. And when he wakes out of his sleep, he says, 
‘How dreadful is this place ; surely, this is none other than 
the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’ This 
PLACE, Observe ; not this church ; not this city ; not this stone, 
even, which he puts up for a memorial—the piece of flint on 
which his head has lain. But this place ; this windy slope 
of Wharnside ; this moorland hollow, torrent-bitten, snow- 
blighted ; this any place where God lets down the ladder. 
And how are you to know where that will be ? or how are you 
to determine where it may be, but by being ready for it 
always? Do you know where the lightning is to fail next? 
You do know that, partly ; you can guide the lightning ; but 
you cannot guide the going forth of the Spirit, which is that 
lightning when it shines from the east to the west. 

But the perpetual and insolent warping of that strong verse 
to serve a merely ecclesiastical purpose, is only one of the 
thousand instances in which we sink back into gross Judaism. 
We call our churches ‘temples.’ Now, you know, or ought 
to know, they are not temples. They have never had, never 
can have, anything whatever to do with temples. They are 
‘synagogues —‘ gathering places’—where you gather your- 
selves together as an assembly ; and by not calling them so, 
you again miss the force of another mighty text—‘ Thou, 
when thou prayest, shalt not be as the hypocrites are; for 
they love to pray standing in the churches’ [we should trans- 
late it], ‘that they may be seen of men. But thou, when thou 
prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy 
door, pray to thy Father,-—which is, not in chancel nor in 
aisle, but ‘in secret.’ 


52 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


Now, you feel, as I say this to you—I know you feel—as 
if I were trying to take away the honour of your churches. 
Not so; I am trying to prove to you the honour of your 
houses and your hills; Iam trying to show you—not that 
the Church is not sacred—but that the whole Earth 1s. I 
would have you feel, what careless, what constant, what in- 
fectious sin there is in all modes of thought, whereby, in 
calling your churches only ‘ holy,’ you call your hearths and 
homes profane; and have separated yourselves from the 
heathen by casting all your household gods to the ground, 
instead of recognising, in the place of their many and feeble 
Lares, the presence of your One and Mighty Lord and Lar. 

‘But what has all this to do with our Exchange?’ you ask 
me, impatiently. My dear friends, it has just everything to 
do with it ; on these inner and great questions depend all the 
outer and little ones; and if you have asked me down here 
to speak to you, because you had before been interested in 
anything I have written, you must know that all I have yet 
said about architecture was to show this. The book I called 
‘The Seven Lamps’ was to show that certain right states of 
temper and moral feeling were the magic powers by which 
all good architecture, without exception, had been produced. 
‘The Stones of Venice,’ had, from beginning to end, no other 
aim than to show that the Gothic architecture of Venice had 
arisen out of, and indicated in all its features, a state of pure 
national faith, and of domestic virtue ; and that its Renais- 
sance architecture had arisen out of, and in all its features in- 
dicated, a state of concealed national infidelity, and of domes- 
tic corruption. And now, you ask me what style is best to 
build in ; and how can I answer, knowing the meaning of the 
two styles, but by another question—do you mean to build 
as Christians or as Infidels? And still more—do you mean 
to build as honest Christians or as honest Infidels ? as thor. 
oughly and confessedly either one or the other? You don’t 
like to be asked such rude questions. I cannot help it; they 
are of much more importance than this Exchange business; 
and if they can be at once answered, the Exchange business 
settles itself in a moment. But, before I press them farther, 


TRAFFIC. 5S 


¥ must ask leave to explain one point clearly. In all my past 
work, my endeavour has been to show that good architecture 
is essentially religious—the production of a faithful and vir- 
tuous, not of an infidel and corrupted people. But in the 
~ course of doing this, I have had also to show that good archi- 
tecture is not ecclesiastical. People are so apt to look upon 
religion as the business of the clergy, not their own, that the 
moment they hear of anything depending on ‘religion,’ they 
think it must also have depended on the priesthood ; and I 
have had to take what place was to be occupied between 
these two errors, and fight both, often with seeming contra- 
diction. Good architecture is the work of good and believ- 
ing men; therefore, you say, at least some people say, ‘Good 
architecture must essentially have been the work of the cler- 
ey, not of the laity.’ No—a thousand times no ; good archi- 
tecture has always been the work of the commonalty, not of 
the clergy. What, you say, those glorious cathedrals—the 
pride of EKurope—did their builders not form Gothic archi- 
tecture? No; they corrupted Gothic architecture. Gothic 
was formed in the baron’s castle, and the burgher’s street. 
It was formed by the thoughts, and hands, and powers of 
free citizens and soldier kings. By the monk it was used as 
an instrument for the aid of his superstition ; when that su- 
perstition became a beautiful madness, and the best hearts of 
Europe vainly dreamed and pined in the cloister, and vainly 
raged and perished in the crusade—through that fury of per- 
verted faith and wasted war, the Gothic rose also to its love- 
lest, most fantastic, and, finally, most foolish dreams; and, 
in those dreams, was lost. 

I hope, now, that there is no risk of your misunderstanding 
me when I come to the gist of what I want to say to-night— 
when I repeat, that every great national architecture has been 
the result and exponent of a great national religion. You 
can’t have bits of it here, bits there—you must have it every- 
where, or nowhere. It is not the monopoly of a clerical com- 
pany—it is not the exponent of a theological dogma—it is not 
the hieroglyphic writing of an initiated priesthood ; it is the 
manly language of a people inspired by resolute and common 


b+ THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
purpose, and rendering resolute and common fidelity to the 
lecible laws of an undoubted God. 

Now, there have as yet been three distinct schools of Eu- 
ropean architecture. I say, European, because Asiatic and 
African architectures belong so entirely to other races and 
climates, that there is no question of them here ; only, in pass- 
ing, I will simply assure you that whatever is good or great 
in Egypt, and Syria, and India, is just good or great for the 
same reasons as the buildings on our side of the Bosphorus. 
We Europeans, then, have had three great religions: the 
Greek, which was the worship of the God of Wisdom and 
Power ; the Medizeval, which was the Worship of the God 
of Judgment and Consolation; the Renaissance, which was 
the worship of the God of Pride and Beauty ; these three we 
have had—they are past,—and now, at last, we English have 
got a fourth religion, and a God of our own, about which I 
want to ask you. But I must explain these three old ones 
first. 

I repeat, first, the Greeks essentially worshipped the God 
of Wisdom; so that whatever contended against their reli- 
gion, —to the Jews a stumbling block,—was, to the Greeks— 
foolishness. 

The first Greek idea of Deity was that expressed in the 
word, of which we keep the remnant in our words ‘ Di-urnal’ 
and ‘ Di-vine’—the god of Day, Jupiter the revealer. Athena 
is his daughter, but especially daughter of the Intellect, 
springing armed from the head. We are only with the help 
of recent investigation beginning to penetrate the depth of 
meaning couched under the Athenaic symbols: but I may 
note rapidly, that her gis, the mantle with the serpent 
fringes, in which she often, in the best statues, is represented 
as folding up her left hand for better guard, and the Gorgon 
on her shield, are both representative mainly of the chilling 
horror and sadness (turning men to stone, as it were,) of the 
outmost and superficial spheres of knowledge—that knowl- 
edge which separates, in bitterness, hardness, and sorrow, 
the heart of the full-grown man from the heart of the child, 
For out of imperfect knowledge spring terror, dissension, 


TRAFFIC. | 55 


danger, and disdain ; but from perfect knowledge, given by 
the full-revealed Athena, strength and peace, in sign of which 
she is crowned with the olive spray, and bears the resistless 
spear. 

This, then, was the Greek conception of purest Deity, and 
every habit of life, and every form of his art developed them- 
selves from the seeking this bright, serene, resistless wisdom ; 
and setting himself, as a man, to do things evermore rightly 
and strongly ;* not with any ardent affection or uitimate 
hope ; but with a resolute and continent energy of will, as 
knowing that for failure there was no consolation, and for sin 
there was no remission. And the Greek architecture rose 
unerring, bright, clearly defined, and self-contained. 

Next followed in Europe the great Christian faith, which 
was essentially the religion of Comfort. Its great doctrine 
is the remission of sins; for which cause it happens, too 
often, in certain phases of Christianity, that sin and sickness 
themselves are partly glorified, as if, the more you had to be 
healed of, the more divine was the healing. The practical 
result of this doctrine, in art, is a continual contemplation 
of sin and disease, and of imaginary states of purification 
from them; thus we have an architecture conceived in a 
mingled sentiment of melancholy and aspiration, partly 
severe, partly luxuriant, which will bend itself to every one 
of our needs, and every one of our fancies, and be strong or 
weak with us, as we are strong or weak ourselves. It is, of 
all architecture, the basest, when base people build it—of all, 
the noblest, when built by the noble. 

And now note that both these religions—Greek and Medi- 


*TIt is an error to suppose that the Greek worship, or seeking, was 
chiefly of Beauty. It wasessentially of Rightness and Strength, founded 
on Forethought: the principal character of Greek art is not Beauty, but 
Design: and the Dorian Apollo-worship and Athenian Virgin-worship 
are both expressions of adoration of divine Wisdom and Purity. Next 
to these great deities rank, in power over the national mind, Dionysus 
and Ceres, the giversof human strength and life: then, for heroic ex- 
ample, Hercules. There is no Venus-worship among the Greek in the 
great times: and the Muses are essentially teachers of Truth, and of its 
harmonies. 


56 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


ceval—-perished by falsehood in their own main purpose. 
The Greek religion of Wisdom perished in a false philosophy 
—‘ Oppositions of science, falsely so called.’ The Medizeval 
religion of Consolation perished in false comfort ; in remis- 
sion of sins given lyingly. It was the selling of absolution 
that ended the Medizeval faith ; and I can tell you more, it is 
the selling of absolution which, to the end of time, will mark 
false Christianity. Pure Christianity gives her remission of 
sins only by ending them; but false Christianity gets her 
remission of sins by compounding for them. And there are 
many ways of compounding for them. We English have 
beautiful little quiet ways of buying absolution, whether in 
low Church or high, far more cunning than any of Tetzel’s 
trading. 

Then, thirdly, there followed the religion of Pleasure, in 
which all Europe gave itself to luxury, ending in death. 
First, bals masqués in every saloon, and then guillotines in 
every square. And all these three worships issue in vast 
temple building. Your Greek worshipped Wisdom, and 
built you the Parthenon—the Virgin’s temple. The Mediz- 
val worshipped Consolation, and built you Virgin temples 
also—but to our Lady of Salvation. Then the Revivalist 
worshipped beauty, of a sort, and built you Versailles, and 
the Vatican. Now, lastly, will you tell me what we worship, 
and what we build? 

You know we are speaking always of the real, active, con- 
tinual, national worship ; that by which men act while they 
live ; not that which they talk of when they die. Now, we 
have, indeed, a nominal religion, to which we pay tithes of 
property, and sevenths of time ; but we have also a practical 
and earnest religion, to which we devote nine-tenths of our. 
property and six-sevenths of our time. And we dispute a 
great deal about the nominal religion ; but we are all unani- 
mous about this practical one, of which I think you will admit 
that the ruling goddess may be best generally described as 
the ‘Goddess of Getting-on,’ or ‘ Britannia of the Market.’ 
The Athenians had an ‘Athena Agoraia,’ or Minerva of the 
Market ; but she was a subordinate type of their goddess, 


TRAFFIC. 52 


while our Britannia Agoraia is the principal type of ours. 
And all your great architectural works, are, of course, built 
to her. It is long since you built a great cathedral ; and how 
you would laugh at me, if I proposed building a cathedral on 
the top of one of these hills of yours, taking it for an Acrop- 
olis! But your railroad mounds, prolonged masses of Acrop- 
olis; your railroad stations, vaster than the Parthenon, and 
innumerable ; your chimneys, how much more mighty and 
costly than cathedral spires! your harbour-piers ; your ware- 
houses; your exchanges !—all these are built to your great 
Goddess of ‘ Getting-on ;’ and she has formed, and will con- 
tinue to form, your architecture, as long as you worship her ; 
and it is quite vain to ask me to tell you how to build to her ; 
you know far better than I. 

There might indeed, on some theories, be a conceivably 
good architecture for Exchanges—that is to say if there were 
any heroism in the fact or deed of exchange, which might be 
typically carved on the outside of your building. For, you 
know, all beautiful architecture must be adorned with sculp- 
ture or painting ; and for sculpture or painting, you must 
have a subject. And hitherto it has been a received opinion 
among the nations of the world that the only right subjects 
for either, were heroisms of some sort. ven on his pots and 
his flagons, the Greek put a Hercules slaying lions, or an 
Apollo slaying serpents, or Bacchus slaying melancholy 
giants, and earth-born despondencies. On his temples, the 
Greek put contests of great warriors in founding states, or of 
gods with evil spirits. On his houses and temples alike, the 
Christian put carvings of angels conquering devils; or of 
hero-martyrs exchanging this world for another; subject in- 
appropriate, I think, to our manner of exchange here. And 
the Master of Christians not only left his foilowers without 
any orders as to the sculpture of affairs of exchange on the 
outside of buildings, but gave some strong evidence of his 
dislike of affairs of exchange within them. And yet there 
might surely be a heroism in such affairs; and all commerce 
become a kind of selling of doves, not impious. The wonder 
has always been great to me, that heroism has never been 


58 LUE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


supposed to be in anywise consistent with the practice ot 
supplying people with food, or clothes; but rather with that 
of quartering oneself upon them for food, and stripping them 
of their clothes. Spoiling of armour is an heroic deed in all 
ages ; but the selling of clothes, old, or new, has never taken 
any colour of magnanimity. Yet one does not see why feed- 
ing the hungry and clothing the naked should ever become 
base businesses, even when engaged in on a large scale. If 
one could contrive to attach the notion of conquest to them 
anyhow? so that, supposing there were anywhere an obstinate 
race, who refused to be comforted, one might take some 
pride in giving them compulsory comfort ; and as it were, 
‘occupying a country’ with one’s gifts, instead of one’s 
armies? If one could only consider it as much a victory to 
get a barren field sown, as to get an eared field stripped ; and 
contend who should build villages, instead of who should 
‘carry’ them. Are not all forms of heroism, conceivable in 
doing these serviceable deeds? You doubt who is strongest? 
It might be ascertained by push of spade, as well as push of 
sword. Who is wisest? There are witty things to be 
thought of in planning other business than campaigns. Who 
is bravest? There are always the elements to fight with, 
stronger than men; and nearly as merciless. The only ab- 
solutely and unapproachably heroic element in the soldier’s 
work seems to be—that he is paid little for it—and regularly: 
while you traffickers, and exchangers, and others occupied in 
presumably benevolent business, like to be paid much for it 
—and by chance. I never can make out how it is that a 
knight-errant does not expect to be paid for his trouble, but a 
pedlar-errant always does ;—that people are willing to take 
hard knocks for nothing, but never to sell ribands cheap ;— 
that they are ready to go on fervent crusades to recover the 
tomb of a buried God, never on any travels to fulfil the 
orders of a living God ;—that they will go anywhere barefoot 
to preach their faith, but must be well bribed to practise it, 
and are perfectly ready to give the Gospel gratis, but never 
the loaves and fishes. If you chose to take the matter up on 
any such soldierly principle, to do your commerce, and your 


TRAFFIC, 59 


-feeding of nations, for fixed salaries ; and to be as particular 
about giving people the best food, and the best cloth, as sol- 
diers are about giving them the best gunpowder, I could 
carve something for you on your exchange worth looking at. 
But I can only at present suggest decorating its frieze with 
pendant purses ; and making its pillars broad at the base for 
the sticking of bills. And in the innermost chambers of it 
there might be a statue of Britannia of the Market, who may 
have, perhaps advisably, a partridge for her crest, typical at 
once of her courage in fighting for noble ideas ; and of her 
interest in game; and round its neck the inscription in golden 
letters, ‘Perdix fovit que non peperit.’* Then, for her 
spear, she might have a weaver’s beam; and on her shield, 
instead of ae Cross, the Milanese boar, semi-fleeced, with 
the town of Gennesaret proper, in the field and the legend 
‘In the best market,’ and her corslet, of leather, folded over 
her heart in the shape of a purse, with thirty slits in it fora 
piece of money to go in at, on each day of the month. And 
I doubt not but that people would come to see your ex- 
change, and its goddess, with applause. 

Nevertheless, I want to point out to you certain strange 
characters in this goddess of yours. She differs from the 
great Greek and Medieval deities essentially in two things— 
first, as to the continuance of her presumed power; secondly, 
as to the extent of it. 

1st, as to the Continuance. 

The Greek Goddess of Wisdom gave continual increase of 
wisdom, as the Christian Spirit of Comfort (or Comforter) 
continual increase of comfort. ‘There was no question, with 
these, of any limit or cessation of function. But with your 
Agora Goddess, that is just the most important question. 
Getting on—but where to? Gathering together—but how 
much? Do you mean to gather always—never to spend? 
If so, I wish you joy of your goddess, for Iam just as well 


* Jerem. xvii. 11 (best in Septuagint and Vulgate). ‘As the partridge, 
fostering what she brought not forth, so he that getteth riches, not by 
right shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall ba 
a fool.’ 


60 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


off as you, without the trouble of worshippiag her at all. 
But if you do not spend, somebody else will—somebody else 
must. And it is because of this (among many other such 
errors) that I have fearlessly declared your so-called science 
of Political Economy to be no science ; because, namely, it 
has omitted the study of exactly the most important branch 
of the business—the study of spending. Forspend you must, 
and as much as you make, ultimately. You gather corn :— 
will you bury England under a heap of grain; or will you, 
when you have gathered, finally eat? You gather gold :—will 
you make your house-roofs of it, or pave your streets with 
it? That is still one way of spending it. Butif you keep 
it, that you may get more, Ill give you more; Ill give you 
all the gold you want—all you can imagine—if you can tell 
me what you'll do with it. You shall have thousands of gold 
pieces ;—thousands of thousands—millions—mountains, of 
gold: where will you keep them? Will you put an Olympus 
of silver upon a golden Pelion—make Ossa like a wart? Do 
you think the rain and dew would then come down to you, in 
the streams from such mountains, more blessedly than they 
will down the mountains which God has made for you, of 
moss and whinstone? But itis not gold that you want to 
gather! What is it? greenbacks? No; not those neither. 
What is it then—is it ciphers after a capital I? Cannot you 
practise writing ciphers, and write as many as you want? 
Write ciphers for an hour every morning, in a big book, and 
say every evening, [am worth all those noughts more than I 
was yesterday. Won't that do? Well, what in the name of 
Plutus is it youwant? Not gold, not greenbacks, not ciphers 
after a capitalI? You will have to answer, after all, ‘No; 
we want, somehow or other, money’s worth. Well, what is 
that? Let your Goddess of Getting-on discover it, and let 
her learn to stay therein. 

If, But there is yet another question to be asked respecting 
this Goddess of Getting-on. The first was of the continuance 
of her power ; the second is of its extent. 

Pallas and the Madonna were supposed to be all the world’s 
Pallas, and all the world’s Madonna. They could teach all 


TRAFFIC. 61 


men, and they could comfort all men. But, look strictly into 
the nature of the power of your Goddess of Getting-on ; and 
you will find she is the Goddess—not of everybody’s getting 
on—but only of somebody’s getting on. This is a vital, or 
rather deathful, distinction. Examine it in your own ideal of 
the state of national life which this Goddess is to evoke and 
maintain. I asked you what it was, when I was last here ;*— 
you have never told me. Now, shall I try to tell you ? 

Your ideal of human life then is, I think, that it should be 
passed in a pleasant undulating world, with iron and coal 
everywhere underneath it. On each pleasant bank of this 
world is to be a beautiful mansion, with two wings; and 
stables, and coach-houses ; a moderately sized park ; a large 
garden and hot houses; and pleasant carriage drives through 
the shrubberies. In this mansion are to live the favoured 
votaries of the Goddess; the English gentleman, with his 
gracious wife, and his beautiful family ; always able to have 
the boudoir and the jewels for the wife, and the beautiful 
ball dresses for the daughters, and hunters for the sons, and 
a shooting in the Highlands for himself. At the bottom of | 
the bank, is to be the mill; not less than a quarter of a mile 
long, with a steam engine at each end, and two in the middle, 
and a chimney three hundred feet high. In this mill are to 
be in constant employment from eight hundred to a thousand 
workers, who never drink, never strike, always go to church 
on Sunday, and always express themselves in respectful lan- 
guage. 

Is not that, broadly, and in the main features, the kind of 
thing you propose to yourselves? It is very pretty indeed 
seen from above ; not at all so pretty, seen from below. For, 
observe, while to one family this deity is indeed the Goddess 
of Getting on, to a thousand families she is the Goddess of 
not Getting on. ‘Nay,’ you say, ‘they have all their chance.’ 
Yes, so hag every one in a lottery, but there must always be 
the same number of blanks. ‘Ah! but in a lottery it is not 
skill and intelligence which take the lead, but blind chance.’ 
What then! do you think the old practice, that ‘they should 

* Two Paths, p. 98. 


62 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


take who have the power, and they should keep who can,’ is 
less iniquitous, when the power has become power of brains 
instead of fist? and that, though we may not take advantage 
of a child’s or a woman’s weakness, we may of a man’s fool- 
ishness? ‘Nay, but finally, work must be done, and some 
one must be at the top, some one at the bottom.’ Granted, 
my friends. Work must always be, and captains of work 
must always be; and if you in the least remember the tone 
of any of my writings, you must know that they are thought 
unfit for this age, because they are always insisting on need 
of government, and speaking with scorn of liberty. But I 
beg you to observe that there is a wide difference between 
being captains or governors of work, and taking the profits of 
it. It does not follow, because you are general of an army, 
that you are to take all the treasure, or land, it wins (if it 
fight for treasure or land) ; neither, because you are king of a 
nation, that you are to consume all the profits of the nation’s 
work. Real kings, on the contrary, are known invariably by 
their doing quite the reverse of this,—by their taking the 
least possible quantity of the nation’s work for themselves. 
There is no test of real kinghood so infallible as that. Does 
the crowned creature live simply, bravely, unostentatiously ? 
probably he is a King. Does he cover his body with jewels, 
and his table with delicates? in all probability he is nota 
King. It is possible he may be, as Solomon was; but that is 
when the nation shares his splendour with him. Solomon 
made gold, not only to be in his own palace as stones, but to 
be in Jerusalem as stones. But even so, for the most part, 
these splendid kinghoods expire in ruin, and only the true 
kinghoods live, which are of royal labourers governing loyal 
labourers ; who, both leading rough lives, establish the true 
dynasties. Conclusively you will find that because you are 
king of a nation, it does not follow that you are to gather for 
yourself all the wealth of that nation; neither, because you 
are king of a small part of the nation, and lord over the means 
of its maintenance—over field, or mill, or mine, are you te 
take all the produce of that piece of the foundation of na- 
tional existence for yourself, 


TRAFFIC. 63 


You will tell me I need not preach against these things, for 
I cannot mend them. No, good friends, I cannot; but you 
can, and you will; or something else can and will. Do you 
think these phenomena are to stay always in their present 
power or aspect? All history shows, on the contrary, that to 
be the exact thing they never can do. Change must come; 
but itis ours to determine whether change of growth, or 
change of death. Shall the Parthenon be in ruins on its rock, 
and Bolton priory in its meadow, but these mills of yours be 
the consummation of the buildings of the earth, and their 
wheels be as the wheels of eternity? Think you that ‘men 
may come, and men may go,’ but—mills—go on forever? 
Not so; out of these, better or worse shall come; and it is 
for you to choose which. 

I know that none of this wrong is done with deliberate pur- 
pose. I know, on the contrary, that you wish your workmen 
well; that you do much for them, and that you desire to do 
more for them, if you saw your way to it safely. I know that 
many of you have done, and are every day doing, whatever 
you feel to be in your power; and that even all this wrong 
and misery are brought about by a warped sense of duty, each 
of you striving to do his best, without noticing that this best 
is essentially and centrally the best for himself, not for others. 
And all this has come of the spreading of that thrice accursed, 
thrice impious doctrine of the modern economist, that ‘To do 
the best for yourself, is finally to do the best for others.’ 
Friends, our great Master said not so; and most absolutely 
we shall find this world is not made so. Indeed, to do the 
best for others, is finally to do the best for ourselves; but it 
will not do to have our eyes fixed on that issue. The Pagans 
had got beyond that. Hear what a Pagan says of this matter ; 
hear what were, perhaps, the last written words of Plato,—if 
not the last actually written (for this we cannot know), yet 
assuredly in fact and power his parting words—in which, en- 
deavouring to give full crowning and harmonious close to all 
his thoughts, and to speak the sum of them by the imagined 
sentence of the Great Spirit, his strength and his heart fail 
him, and the words cease, broken off for ever. It is the close 


64 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


of the dialogue called ‘Critias,’ in which he describes, partly 
from real tradition, partly in ideal dream, the early state of 
Athens; and the genesis, and order, and religion, of the 
fabled isle of Atlantis ; in which genesis he conceives the same 
first perfection and final degeneracy of man, which in our own 
Scriptural tradition is expressed by saying that the Sons of God 
intermarried with the daughters of men, for he supposes the 
earliest race to have been indeed the children of God; and to 
have corrupted themselves, until ‘their spot was not the spot 
of his children.’ And this, he says, was the end; that indeed 
‘through many generations, so long as the God’s nature in 
them yet was full, they were submissive to the sacred laws, 
and carried themselves lovingly to all that had kindred with 
them in divineness; for their uttermost spirit was faithful 
and true, and in every wise great; so that, in all meekness of 
wisdom, they dealt with each other, and took all the chances 
of lifé ; and despising all things except virtue, they cared little 
what happened day by day, and bore lightly the burden of gold 
aud of possessions; for they saw that, if only their common 
love and virtue increased, all these things would be increased 
together with them ; but to set their esteem and ardent pur- ~ 
suit upon material possession would be to lose that first, and 
their virtue and affection together with it. And by such 
reasoning, and what of the divine nature remained in them, 
they gained all this greatness of which we have already told ; 
but when the God’s part of them faded and became extinct, 
being mixed again and again, and effaced by the prevalent 
mortality ; and the human nature at last exceeded, they then 
became unable to endure the courses of fortune ; and fell into 
shapelessness of life, and baseness in the sight of him who 
could see, having lost everything that was fairest of their hon- - 
our; while to the blind hearts which could not discern the 
true life, tending to happiness, it seemed that they were then 
chiefly noble and happy, being filled with all iniquity of inor- 
dinate possession and power. Whereupon, the God of God’s, 
whose Kinghood is in laws, beholding a once just nation thus 
cast into misery, and desiring to lay such punishment upon 
them as might make them repent into restraining, gathered 


TRAFFIC, 65 


together all the gods into his dwelling-place, which from 
heaven’s centre overlooks whatever has part in creation ; and 
_ haying assembled them, he said’ 

The rest is silence. So ended are the last words of the 
chief wisdom of the heathen, spoken of this idol ef riches ; 
this idol of yours; this golden image high by measureless 
cubits, set up where your green fields of England are fur- 
nace-burnt into the likeness of the plain of Dura: this idol, 
forbidden to us, first of all idols, by our own Master and 
faith ; forbidden to us also by every human lip that has ever, 
in any age or people, been accounted of as able to speak ac« 
cording to the purposes of God. Continue to make that for- 
bidden deity your principal one, and soon no more art, no 
more science, no more pleasure will be possible. Catastro- 
phe will come ; or worse than catastrophe, slow mouldering 
and withering into Hades. But if you can fix some concep- 
tion of a true human state of life to be striven for—life for all 
men as for yourselves—if you can determine some honest and 
simple order of existence ; following those trodden ways of 
wisdom, which are pleasantness, and seeking her quiet and 
withdrawn paths, which are peace ;—then, and so sanctifying 
wealth into ‘commonwealth,’ all your art, your literature, 
your daily labours, your domestic affection, and citizen’s duty, 
will join and increase into one magnificent harmony. You 
will know then how to build, well enough; you will build 
with stone well, but with flesh better; temples not made 
with hands, but riveted of hearts; and that kind of marble, 
crimson-veined, is indeed eternal, 

5 





LECTURE TL 


WAR. 


(Delivered at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich.) 


Youne soldiers, I do not doubt but that many of you came 
unwillingly to-night, and many in merely contemptuous 
curiosity, to hear what a writer on painting could possibly say, 
or would venture to say, respecting your great art of war. 
You may well think within yourselves, that a painter might, 
perhaps without immodesty, lecture younger painters upon 
painting, but not young lawyers upon law, nor young physi- 
cians upon medicine—least of all, it may seem to you, young 
warriors upon war. And, indeed, when I was asked to address 
you, I declined at first, and declined long ; for I felt that you 
would not be interested in my special business, and would cer- 
tainly think there was small need for me to come to teach you 
yours. Nay, I knew that there ought to be no such need, for 
the great veteran soldiers of England are now men every way 
so thoughtful, so noble, and so good, that no other teaching 
than their knightly example, and their few words of grave 
and tried counsel should be either necessary for you, or even, 
without assurance of due modesty in the offerer, endured by 
you. 

But being asked, not once nor twice, I have not ventured 
persistently to refuse ; and I will try, in very few words, to 
lay before you some reason why you should accept my excuse, 
and hear me patiently. You may imagine that your work is 
wholly foreign to, and separate from mine. So far from that, 
all the pure and noble arts of peace are founded on war ; no 
ereat art ever yet rose on earth, but among a nation of sol- 
diers. There is no art among a shepherd people, if it remains 


WAR. 67 


at peave. There is no art among an agricultural people, if it 
remains at peace. Commerce is barely consistent with fine art ; 
but cannot produce it. Manufacture not only is unable to 
produce it, but invariably destroys whatever seeds of it exist. 
There is no great art possible to a nation but that which is 
based on battle. 

Now, though I hope you love fighting for its own sake, you 
must, I imagine, be surprised at my assertion that there is 
any such good fruit of fighting. You supposed, probably, 
that your office was to defend the works of peace, but cer- 
tainly not to found them: nay, the common course of war, 
you may have thought, was only to destroy them. And truly, 
I who tell you this of the use of war, should have been the 
last of men to tell you so, had I trusted my own experience 
only. Hear why: I have given a considerable part of my life 
to the investigation of Venetian painting and the result of that 
enquiry was my fixing upon one man as the greatest of all 
Venetians, and therefore, as I believed, of all painters what- 
soever. I formed this faith, (whether right or wrong matters 
at present nothing,) in the supremacy of the painter Tintoret, 
under a roof covered with his pictures ; and of those pictures, 
three of the noblest were then in the form of shreds of ragged 
canvas, mixed up with the laths cf the roof, rent through by 
three Austrian shells. Now it is not every lecturer who could 
tell you that he had seen three of his favourite pictures torn 
to rags by bombshells. And after such a sight, it is not every 
lecturer who would tell you that, nevertheless, war was the 
foundation of all great art. 

Yet the conclusion is inevitable, from any careful compari- 
son of the states of great historic races at different periods. 
Merely to show you what I mean, I will sketch for you, very 
briefly, the broad steps of the advance of the best art of the 
world. The first dawn of itis in Kgypt; and the power of it 
is founded on the perpetual contemplation of death, and of 
future judgment, by the mind of a nation of which the ruling 
easte were priests, and the second, soldiers. The greatest 
works produced by them are sculptures of their kings going 
out to battle, or receiving the homage of conquered armies. 


68 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


And you must remember also, as one of the great keys to the 
splendour of the Egyptian nation, that the priests were not 
occupied in theology only. Their theology was the basis of 
practical government and law, so that they were not so much 
priests as religious judges, the office of Samuel, among the 
Jews, being as nearly as possible correspondent to theirs. 

All the rudiments of art then, and much more than the 
rudiments of all science, are laid first by this great warrior- 
nation, which held in contempt all mechanical .trades, and in 
absolute hatred the peaceful life of shepherds. From Egypt 
art passes directly into Greece, where all poetry, and all 
painting, are nothing else than the description, praise, or 
dramatic representation of war, or of the exercises which 
prepare for it, in their connection with offices of religion. 
All Greek institutions had first respect to war; and their con- 
ception of it, as one necessary office of all human and divine 
life, is expressed simply by the images of their guiding gods. 
Apollo is the god of all wisdom of the intellect ; he bears the 
arrow and the bow, before he bears the lyre. Again, Athena 
is the goddess of all wisdom in conduct. It is by the helmet 
and the shield, oftener than by the shuttle, that she is distin- 
guished from other deities. 

There were, however, two great differences in principle be- 
tween the Greek and the Egyptian theories of policy. In 
Greece there was no soldier caste; every citizen was neces- 
sarily a soldier. And, again, while the Greeks rightly de- 
spised mechanical arts as much as the Egyptians, they did 
not make the fatal mistake of despising agricultural. and pas- 
toral life ; but perfectly honoured both. These two conditions 
of truer thought raise them quite into the highest rank of wise 
manhood that has yet been reached; for all our great arts, 
and nearly all our great thoughts, have been borrowed or de- 
rived from them. Take away from us what they have given ; 
and I hardly can imagine how low the modern European 
would stand. 

Now, you are to remember, in passing to the next phase of 
history, that though you must have war to produce art—you 
must also have much more than war; namely an art-instinct 


WAR. 69 


sr genius in the people; and that, though all the talent for 
painting in the world won’t make painters of you, unless you 
have a gift for fighting as well, you may have the gift for 
fighting, and none for painting. Now, in the next great dy. 
nasty of soldiers, the art-instinct is wholly wanting. I have 
not yet investigated the Roman character enough to tell you 
the causes of this; but I believe, paradoxical as it may seem 
to you, that, however truly the Roman might say of himself 
that he was born of Mars, and suckled by the wolf, he was 
nevertheless, at heart, more of a farmer than a soldier. The 
exercises of war were with him practical, not poetical ; his 
poetry was in domestic life only, and the object of battle, 
‘pacis imponere morem.’ And the arts are extinguished in 
his hands, and do not rise again, until, with Gothic chivalry, 
there comes back into the mind of Europe a passionate de- 
light in war itself, for the sake of war. And then, with the 
romantic knighthood which can imagine no other noble em- 
ployment,—under the fighting kings of France, England, and 
Spain; and under the fighting dukeships and citizenships of 
Italy, art is born again, and rises to her height in the great 
valleys of Lombardy and Tuscany, through which there flows 
not a single stream, from all their Alps or Apennines, that did 
not once run dark red from battle: and it reaches its culmi- 
nating glory in the city which gave to history the most in- 
tense type of soldiership yet seen among men ;—the city 
whose armies were led in their assault by their king, led 
through it to victory by their king, and so led, though that 
king of theirs was blind, and in the extremity of his age. 

And from this time forward, as peace is established or ex- 
tended in Europe, the arts decline. They reach an un- 
paralleled pitch of costliness, but lose their life, enlist them- 
selves at last on the side of luxury and various corruption, 
and, among wholly tranquil nations, wither utterly away ; 
remaining only in partial practice among races who, like the 
French and us, have still the minds, though we cannot all 
jive the lives, of soldiers. 

‘It may be so,’ I can suppose that a philanthropist might 
exclaim. ‘Perish then the arts, if they can flourish only at 


TO THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


such a cost. What worth is there in toys of canvas and stone, 
if compared to the joy and peace of artless domestic life?’ 
And the answer is—truly, in themselves, none. But as expres< 
sions of the highest state of the human spirit, their worth is in- 
finite. As results they may be worthless, but, as signs, they 
are above price. For it is an assured truth that, whenever 
the faculties of men are at their fulness, they must express 
themselves by art; and to say that a state is without such ex- 
pression, is to say that it is sunk from its proper level of 
manly nature. So that, when I tell you that war is the foun- 
dation of all the arts, I mean also that it is the foundation of 
all the high virtues and faculties of men. 

It was very strange to me to discover this; and very dread- 
ful—but I saw it to be quite an undeniable fact. The com- 
mon notion that peace and the virtues of civil life flourished 
together, I found, to be wholly untenable. Peace and the 
vices of civil life only flourish together. We talk of peace 
and learning, and of peace and plenty, and of peace and civil- 
isation ; but I found that those were not the words which the 
Muse of History coupled together: that on her lips, the words 
were—peace and sensuality, peace and selfishness, peace and 
corruption, peace and death. I found, in brief, that all great 
nations learned their truth of word, and strength of thought, 
in war ; that they were nourished in war, and wasted by peace ; 
iaueht by war, and deceived by peace; trained by war, and 
betrayed by peace ;—in a word, that they were born in war, 
and expired in peace. 

Yet now note carefully, in the second phicd it is not all war 
of which this can be said-——nor all dragon’s teeth, which, 
sown, will start up into men. It is not the ravage of a bar- 
barian wolf-flock, as under Genserie or Suwarrow; nor the 
habitual restlessness and rapine of mountaineers, as on the 
old borders of Scotland ; nor the occasional strugele of a 
strong peaceful nation for its life, as in the wars of the Swiss 
with Austria; nor the contest of merely ambitious nations 
for extent of power, as in the wars of France under Napoleon, 
or the just terminated war in America. None of these forms 
of war build anything but tombs. But the creative or foun. 


WAR. 71 


dational war is that in which the natural restlessness and love 
of contest among men are disciplined, by consent, into modes 
of beautiful—though it may be fatal—play : in which the nat- 
ural ambition and love of power of men are disciplined into 
the aggressive conquest of surrounding evil: and in which the 
natural instincts of self-defence are sanctified by the nobleness 
of the institutions, and purity of the households, which they 
are appointed to defend. To such war as this all men are 
born ; in such war as this any man may happily die ; and forth 
from such war as this have arisen throughout the extent of 
past ages, all the highest sanctities and virtues of humanity. 

I shall therefore divide the war of which I would speak to 
you into three heads. War for exercise or play ; war for do- 
minion ; and, war for defence. 

I. And first, of war for exercise or play. I speak of it pri- 
marily in this light, because, through all past history, manly 
war has been more an exercise than anything else, among the 
classes who cause, and proclaim it. Itis not a game-to the con- 
script, or the pressed sailor; but neither of these are the 
causers of it. ‘To the governor who determines that war shall 
be, and to the youths who voluntarily adopt it as their pro- 
fession, it has always been a grand pastime ; and chiefly pur- 
sued because they had nothing else to do. And this is true 
without any exception. No king whose mind was fully occu- 
pied with the development of the inner resources of his king- 
dom, or with any other sufficing subject of thought, ever en- 
tered into war but on compulsion. No youth who was 
earnestly busy with any peaceful subject of study, or set on 
any serviceable course of action, ever voluntarily became a 
soldier. Occupy him early, and wisely, in agriculture or 
business, in science or in literature, and he will never think of 
war otherwise than as a calamity. But leave him idle ; and, 
the more brave and active and capable he is by nature, the 
more he will thirst for some appointed field for action ; and 
find, in the passion and peril of battle, the only satisfying ful- 
filment of his unoccupied being. And from the earliest in- 
cipient civilisation until now, the population of the earth 
divides itself, when you look at it widely, into two races ; one 





72 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


of workers, and the other of players—one tilling the ground, 
manufacturing, building, and otherwise providing for the 
necessities of life ;—the other part proudly idle, and continu« 
ally therefore needing recreation, in which they use the pro- 
ductive and laborious orders partly as their cattle, and partly 
as their puppets or pieces in the game of death. 

Now, remember, whatever virtue or goodliness there may be 
in this game of war, rightly played, there is none when you 
thus play it with a multitude of small human pawns. 

If you, the gentlemen of this or any other kingdom, choose 
to make your pastime of contest, do so, and welcome; but 
set not up these unhappy peasant-pieces upon the green 
fielded board. If the wager is to be of death, lay it on your 
own heads, not theirs. A goodly struggle in the Olympic 
dust, though it be the dust of the grave, the gods will look 
upon, and be with you in; but they will not be with you, if 
you sit on the sides of the amphitheatre, whose steps are the 
mountains of earth, whose arena its valleys, to.urge your 
peasant millions into gladiatorial war. You also, you tender 
and delicate women, for whom, and by whose command, all 
true battle has been, and must ever be ; you would perhaps 
shrink now, though you need not, from the thought of sitting 
as queens above set lists where the jousting game might be 
mortal. How much more, then, ought you to shrink from 
the thought of sitting above a theatre pit in which even a 
few condemned slaves were slaying each other only for your 
delight! And do you not shrink from the fact of sitting 
above a theatre pit, where,—not condemned slaves,—but the 
best and bravest of the poor sons of your people, slay each 
other,—not man to man,—as the coupled gladiators; but 
race to race, in duel of generations? You would tell me, 
perhaps, that you do not sit to see this; and it is indeed 
true, that the women of Europe—those who have no heart- 
interests of their own at peril in the contest—draw the cur- 
tains of their boxes, and muffle the openinys ; so that from 
the pit of the circus of slaughter there may reach them only 
at intervals a half-heard cry and a murmur as of the wind’s 
sighing, when myriads of souls expire. They shut out the 


WAR. 73 


death-cries; and are happy, and talk wittily among them- 
selves. That is the utter literal fact of what our ladies do in 
their pleasant lives. 

Nay, you might answer, speaking for them—‘ We do not 
let these wars come to pass for our play, nor by our careless- 
ness; we cannot help them. How can any final quarrel of 
nations be settled otherwise than by war?’ I cannot now 
delay, to tell you how political quarrels might be otherwise 
settled. But grant that they cannot. Grant that no law of 
reason can be understood by nations; no law of justice sub- 
mitted to by them: and that, while questions of a few acres, 
and of petty cash, can be determined by truth and equity, 
the questions which are to issue in the perishing or saving of 
kingdoms can be determined only by the truth of the sword, 
and the equity of the rifle. Grant this, and even then, judge 
if it will always be necessary for you to put your quarrel into 
the hearts of your poor, and sign your treaties with peasants’ 
blood. You would be ashamed to do this in your own private 
position and power. Why should you not be ashamed also 
to do it in public place and power? If you quarrel with your 
neighbour, and the quarrel be indeterminable by law, and 
mortal, you and he do not send your footmen to Battersea 
fields to fight it out; nor do you set fire to his tenants’ cot- 
tages, nor spoil their goods. You fight out your quarrel 
yourselves, and at your own danger, if at all. And you do 
not think it materially affects the arbitrement that one of you 
has a larger household_than the other ; so that, if the servants 
or tenants were brought into the field with their masters, the 
issue of the contest could not be doubtful? You either 
refuse the private duel, or you practise it under laws of 
honour, not of physical force ; that so it may be, in a manner, 
justly concluded. Now the just or unjust conclusion of the 
private feud is of little moment, while the just or unjust con- 
clusion of the public feud is of eternal moment: and yet, in 
this public quarrel, you take your servants’ sons from thei: 
arms to fight for it, and your servants’ food from their lips te 
support it; and the black seals on the parchment of your 
treaties of peace are the deserted hearth and the fruitless field, 


74 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


There is a ghastly ludicrousness in this, as there is mostly in 
these wide and universal crimes. Hear the statement of the 
very fact of it in the most literal words of the greatest of our 
Enelish thinkers :— 


‘What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net-purport and 
upshot of war? To my own knowledge, for exampie, there dwell and 
toil, in the British village of Dumdrudge, usually some five hundred 
souls. From these, by certain ‘‘ natural enemies” of the French, there 
are successively selected, during the French war, say thirty able-bodied 
men. Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them ; 
she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, 
and even trained them to crafts, so that one can weave, another build, 
another hammer, and the weakest can stand under thirty stone avoir- 
dupois. Nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they are se- 
lected ; all dressed in red ; and shipped away, at the public charges, 
some two thousand miles, or say only to the south of Spain ; and fed 
there till wanted. 

‘And now to that same spot in the south of Spain are thirty similar 
French artisans, from a French Dumdrudge, in like manner wending ; 
till at length, after infinite effort, the two parties come into actual 
juxtaposition; and Thirty stands fronting Thirty, each with a gun in 
his hand. 

‘Straightway the word ‘‘ Fire!” is given, and they blow the souls 
out of one another, and in place of sixty brisk useful craftsmen, the 
world has sixty dead carcases, which it must bury, and anon shed tears 
for. Had these men any quarrel? Busy as the devil is, not the small- 
est! They lived far enough apart; were the entirest strangers ; nay, 
in so wide a universe, there was even, unconsciously, by commerce, 
some mutual helpfulness between them. How then? Simpleton! 
their governors had fallen out; and instead of shooting one another 
had the cunning to make these poor blockheads shoot.’ (Sartor Re- 
sartus. ) 


Positively, then, gentlemen, the game of battle must nof, 
and shall not, ultimately be played this way. But should it 
be played any way? Should it, if not by your servants, be 
practised by yourselves? I think, yes. Both history and 
human instinct seem alike to say, yes. All healthy men like 
fighting, and like the sense of danger; all brave women like 
to hear of their fighting, and of their facing danger. ‘This is 
a fixed instinct in the fine race of them ; and I cannot help 


WAR. 75 


fancying that fair fight is the best play for them ; and that a 
tournament was a better game than a steeple-chase. The 
time may perhaps come in France as well as here, for univer- 
sal hurdle-races and cricketing: but I do not think universal 
‘crickets’ will bring out the best qualities of the nobles of 
either country. Iuse, in such question, the test which I have 
adopted, of the connection of war with other arts ; and I re. 
flect how, as a sculptor, I should feel, if I were asked to de- 
sion a monument for a dead knight, in Westminster abbey, 
with a carving of a bat at one end, and a ball at the other. 
It may be the remains in me only of savage Gothic prejudice ; 
but I had rather carve it with a shield at one end, and a 
sword at the other. And this, observe, with no reference 
whatever to any story of duty done, or cause defended. As- 
sume the knight merely to have ridden out occasionally to 
fight his neighbour for exercise ; assume him even a soldier 
of fortune, and to have gained his bread, and filled his purse, 
at the sword’s point. Still, I feel as if it were, somehow, 
erander and worthier in him to have made his bread by sword 
play than any other play ; I had rather he had made it by 
thrusting than by batting ;—much more, than by betting. 
Much rather that he should ride war horses, than back race 
horses ; and—I say it sternly and deliberately—much rather 
would [I have him slay his neighbour, than cheat him. 

But remember, so far as this may be true, the game of war 
is only that in which the full personal power of the human 
creature is brought out in manageme.t of its weapons. And 
this for three reasons :— 

First, the great justification of this game is that it truly, 
when well played, determines who is the best man ;—who is 
the highest bred, the most self-denying, the most fearless, 
the coolest of nerve, the swiftest of eye and hand. You can- 
not test these qualities wholly, unless there is a clear possi- 
bility of the struggle’s ending in death. It is only in the 
fronting of that condition that the full trial of the man, soul 
and body, comes out. You may go to your game of wickets, 
or of hurdles, or of cards, and any knavery that is in you may 
stay unchallenged all the while. But if the play may be 


76 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


ended at any moment by a lance-thrust, a man will probably 
make up his accounts a little before he enters it. Whatever 
is rotten and evil in him will weaken his hand more in hold- 
ing a sword hilt, than in balancing a billiard cue; and on the 
whole, the habit of living lightly hearted, in daily presence of 
death, always has had, and must have, a tendency both to the 
making and testing of honest men. But for the final testing, 
observe, you must make the issue of battle strictly dependent 
on fineness of frame, and firmness of hand. You must not 
make it the question, which of the combatants has the longest 
gun, or which has got behind the biggest tree, or which has 
the wind in his face, or which has gunpowder made by the 
best chemist, or iron smelted with the best coal, or the 
angriest mob at his back. Decide your battle, whether of 
nations, or individuals, on those terms ;—and you have only 
multiplied confusion, and added slaughter to iniquity. But 
decide your battle by pure trial which has the strongest arm, 
and steadiest heart,—and you have gone far to decide a great 
many matters besides, and to decide them rightly. 

And the other reasons for this mode of decision of cause, 
are the diminution both of the material destructiveness, or 
cost, and of the physical distress of war. For you must not 
think that in speaking to you in this (as you may imagine), 
fantastic praise of battle, I have overlooked the conditions 
weighing against me. I pray all of you, who have not read, 
to read with the most earnest attention, Mr. Helps’s two essays 
on War and Government, in the first volume of the last series 
of ‘Friends in Council.’ Everything that can be urged against 
war is there simply, exhaustively, and most graphically stated. 
And all, there urged, is true. But the two great counts of 
evil alleged against war by that most thoughtful writer, hold 
only against modern war. If you have to take away masses 
of men from all industrial employment,—to feed them by the 
labour of others,—to move them and provide them with de- 
structive machines, varied daily in national rivalship of invent 
ive cost ; if you have to ravage the country which you attack, — 
to destroy for a score of future years, its roads, its woods, its 
cities, and its harbours ;—and if, finally, having brought masses 





WAR. 77 


of men, counted by hundreds of thousands, face to face, you 
tear those masses to pieces with jagged shot, and leave the frag- 
ments of living creatures countlessly beyond all help of sur- 
gery, to starve and parch, through days of torture, down into 
clots of clay—what book of accounts shall record the cost of 
your work ;—What book of judgment sentence the guilt of it? 

That, I say, is modern war,—scientific war,—chemical and 
mechanic war, worse even than the savage’s poisoned arrow. 
And yet you will tell me, perhaps, that any other war than 
this is impossible now. It may be so; the progress of science 
cannot, perhaps, be otherwise registered than by new facilities 
of destruction ; and the brotherly love of our enlarging Chris- 
tianity be only proved by multiplication of murder. Yet hear, 
for a moment, what war was, in Pagan and ignorant days ;—- 
what war might yet be, if we could extinguish our science in 
darkness, and join the heathen’s practice to the Christian’s 
theory. I read you this from a book which probably most of 
you know well, and all ought to know—Muller’s ‘ Dorians ;’— 
but I have put the points I wish you to remember in closer 
connection than in his text. 

‘The chief characteristic of the warriors of Sparta was great 
composure and subdued strength; the violence (Avoca) of 
Aristodemus and Isadas being considered as deserving rather 
of blame than praise ; and these qualities in general distin- 
guished the Greeks from the northern Barbarians, whose bold- 
ness always consisted in noise and tumulé. For the same rea- 
son the Spartans sacrificed to the Muses before an action ; these 
eoddesses being expected to produce regularity and order in 
battle ; as they sacrificed on the same occasion in Crete to the 
god of love, as the confirmer of mutual esteem and shame. 
Every man put on a crown, when the band of flute-players 
eave the signal for attack ; all the shields of the line glittered 
with their high polish, and mingled their splendour with the 
dark red of the purple mantles, which were meant both to 
adorn the combatant, and to conceal the blood of the wounded ; 
to fall well and decorously being an incentive the more to the 
most heroic valour. The conduct of the Spartans in battle 
denotes a high and noble disposition, which rejected all the 


78 - DHE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


extremes of brutal rage. The pursuit of the enemy ceased 
when the victory was completed ; and after the signal for retreat 
had been given, all hostilities ceased. The spoiling of arms, 
at least during the battle, was also interdicted ; and the con- 
secration of the spoils of slain enemies to the gods, as, in gen« 
eral, all rejoicings for victory, were considered as ill-omened. 

Such was the war of the greatest soldiers who prayed te 
heathen gods. “What Christian war is, preached by Christian 
ministers, let any one tell you, who saw the sacred crowning, 
and heard the sacred flute-playing, and was inspired and 
sanctified by the divinely-measured and musical language, of 
any North American regiment preparing for its charge. And 
what is the relative cost of life in pagan and Christian wars, 
let this one fact tell you :—the Spartans won the decisive bat- 
tle of Corinth with the loss of eight men ; the victors at in- 
decisive Gettysburg confess to the loss of 30,000. 

II. I pass now to our second order of war, the commonest 
among men, that undertaken in desire of dominion. And let 
me ask you to think for a few moments what the real mean- 
ing of this desire of dominion is—first in the minds of kings 
—then in that of nations. 

Now, mind you this first,—that I speak either about kings, 
or masses of men, with a fixed conviction that human nature 
is a noble and beautiful thing; not afoul nora base thing. 
All the sin of men I esteem as their disease, not their nature ; 
as a folly which may be prevented, not a necessity which 
must be accepted. And my wonder, even when things are at 
their worst, is always at the height which this human nature 
can attain. Thinking it high, I find it always a higher thing 
than I thought it ; while those who think it low, find it, and 
will find it, always lower than they thought it: the fact being, 
that it is infinite, and capable of infinite height and infinite 
fall ; but the nature of it—and here is the faith which I would 
have you hold with me—the nature of it is in the nobleness, 
not in the catastrophe. 

Take the faith in its utmost terms. When the captain of 
the ‘London’ shook hands with his mate, saying ‘God speed 
you! I will go down with my passengers,’ that I believe to be 


WAR. 79 


‘human nature.’ He does not do it from any religious motive 
from any hope of reward, or any fear of punishment; he 
does it because he is a man. But when a mother, living among 
the fair fields of merry England, gives her two-year-old child 
to be suffocated under a mattress in herinner room, while the 
said mother waits and talks outside; that I believe to be not 
human nature. You have the two extremes there, shortly. 
And you, men, and mothers, who are here face to face with 
me to-night, I call upon you to say which of these is human, 
and which inhuman—which ‘natural’ and which ‘ unnat- 
ural?’ Choose your creed at once, I beseech you :—choose it 
with unshaken choice—choose it forever. Will you take, for 
foundation of act and hope, the faith that this man was such 
as God made him, or that this woman was such as God made 
her? Which of them has failed from their nature—from their 
present, possible, actual nature ;—not their nature of long 
ago, but their nature of now? Which has betrayed it—falsi- 
fied it? Did the guardian who died in his trust, die inhu- 
manly, and as a fool; and did the murderess of her child 
fulfil the law of her being? Choose, I say; infinitude of 
choices hang upon this. You have had false prophets among 
you—for centuries you have had them—solemnly warned 
against them though you were ; false prophets, who have told 
you that all men are nothing but fiends or wolves, half beast, 
half devil. Believe that and indeed you may sink to that. 
But refuse that, and have faith that God ‘made you upright,’ 
though you have sought out many inventions; so, you will 
strive daily to become more what your Maker meant and 
means you to be, and daily gives you also the power to be— 
and you will cling more and more to the nobleness and virtue 
that is in you, saying, ‘My righteousness I hold fast, and will 
not let it go” = 

I have put this to you as a choice, as if you might hold 
either of these creeds you liked best. But there is in reality 
no choice for you; the facts being quite easily ascertainable. 
You have no business to think about this matter, or to choose 
in it. The broad fact is, that a human creature of the highest 
race, and most perfect as a human thing, is invariably both 


80 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


kind and true; and that as you lower the race, you get cruelty 
and falseness, as you get deformity: and this so steadily and 
assuredly, that the two great words which, in their first use, 
meant only perfection of race, have come, by consequence of 
the invariable connection of virtue with the fine human nature, 
both to signify benevolence of disposition. The word gener- 
ous, and the word gentle, both, in their origin, meant only 
‘of pure race,’ but because charity and tenderness are insep- 
arable from this purity of blood, the words which once stood 
only for pride, now stand as synonyms for virtue. 

Now, this being the true power of our inherent humanity, 
and seeing that all the aim of education should be to develop 
this ;—and seeing also what magnificent self sacrifice the 
higher classes of men are capable of, for any cause that they 
understand or feel,—it is wholly inconceivable to me how well- 
educated princes, who ought to be of all gentlemen the gen- 
tlest, and of all nobles the most generous, and whose title of 
royalty means only their function of doing every man ‘right’ 
—how these, I say, throughout history, should so rarely pro- 
nounce themselves on the side of the poor and of justice, but 
continually maintain themselves and their own interests by 
oppression of the poor, and by wresting of justice; and how 
this should be accepted as so natural, that the word loyalty, 
which means faithfulness to law, is used as if it were only the 
duty of a people to be loyal to their king, and not the duty of 
a king to be infinitely more loyal to his people. How comes 
it to pass that a captain will die with his passengers, and lean 
over the gunwale to give the parting boat its course ; but that 
a king will not usually die with, much less for, his passengers, 
—thinks it rather incumbent on his passengers, in any num- 

er, to die for him? Think, I beseech you, of the wonder of 
this. The sea captain, not captain by divine right, but only 
by company’s appointment ;—not a man of royal descent, but 
only a plebeian who can steer ;—not with the eyes of the world 
upon him, but with feeble chance, depending on one poor 
boat, of his name being ever heard above the wash of the fatal 
waves ;—not with the cause of a nation resting on his act, but 
helpless to save so much as a child from among the lost crowd 


WAL. 81 


with whom he resolves to be lost,—yet goes down quietly to 
his grave, rather than break his faith to these few emigrants. 
But your captain by divine right,—your captain with the hues 
of a hundred shields of kings upon his breast,—your captain 
whose every deed, brave or base, will be illuminated or 
branded for ever before unescapable eyes of men,—your cap- 
tain whose every thought and act are beneficent, or fatal, from 
sunrising to setting, blessing as the sunshine, or shadowing 
as the night,—this captain, as you find him in history, for the 
most part thinks only how he may tax his passengers, and 
sit at most ease in his state cabin! 

For observe, if there had been indeed in the hearts of the 
rulers of great multitudes of men any such conception of 
work for the good of those under their command, as there is 
in the good and thoughtful masters of any small company of 
men, not only wars for the sake of mere increase of power 
could never take place, but our idea of power itself would be 
entirely altered. Do you suppose that to think and act even 
for a million of men, to hear their complaints, watch their 
weaknesses, restrain their vices, make laws for them, lead 
them, day by day, to purer life, is not enough for one man’s 
work? Ifany of us were absolute lord only of a district of 
a hundred miles square, and were resolved on doing our ut- 
most for it; making it feed as large a number of people as 
possible ; making every clod productive, and every rock de- 
fensive, and every human being happy; should we not have 
enough on our hands think you? SButif the ruler has any 
other aim than this ; if, careless of the result of his interfer- 
ence, he desire only the authority to interfere ; and, regard- 
less of what is ill-done or well-done, cares only that it shall 
be done at his bidding ,—if he would rather do two hundred 
miles’ space of mischief, than one hundred miles’ space of 
good, of course he will try to add to his territory ; and to add 
illimitably. But does he add to his power? Do you call it 
power in a child, if he is allowed to play with the wheels and 
bands of some vast engine, pleased with theis murmur and 
whirl, till his unwise touch, wandering where it ought not. 
scatters beam and wheel into ruin? Yet what machine is se 

6 


82 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


vast, so incognisable, as the working of the mind of a nation: 
what child’s touch so wanton, as the word of a selfish king ? 
And yet, how long have we allowed the historian to speak of 
the extent of the calamity a man causes, as a just ground for 
his pride; and to extol him as the greatest prince, who is 
only the centre of the widest error. Follow out this thought 
by yourselves ; and you will find that all power, properly so 
called, is wise and benevolent. ‘There may be capacity in a 
drifting fire-ship to destroy a fleet; there may be venom 
enough in a dead body to infect a nation :—but which of you, 
the most ambitious, would desire a drifting kinghood, robed 
in consuming fire, or a poison-dipped sceptre whose touch 
was mortal? There is no true potency, remember, but that of 
help ; nor true ambition, but ambition to save. 

And then, observe farther, this true power, the power of 
saving, depends neither on multitude of men, nor on extent 
of territory. We are continually assuming that nations be- 
come strong according to their numbers. They indeed be- 
come so, if those numbers can be made of one mind; but 
how are you sure you can stay them in one mind, and keep 
them from having north and south minds? Grant them 
unanimous, how know you they will be unanimous in right? 
If they are unanimous in wrong, the more they are, essentially 
the weaker they are. Or, suppose that they can neither be of 
one mind, nor of two minds, but can only be of no mind ? 
Suppose they are a mere helpless mob ; tottering into precipi- 
tant catastrophe, like a waggon load of stones when the whee] 
comes off. Dangerous enough for their neighbours, certainly, 
but. not ‘ powerful.’ 

Neither does strength depend on extent of territory, any 
more than upon number of population. Take up your maps 
when you go home this evening,—put the cluster of British 
Isles beside the mass of South America; and then consider 
whether any race of men need care how much ground they 
stand upon. The strength is in the men, and in their unity 
and virtue, not in their standing room: a little group of wise 
hearts is better than a wilderness full of fools; and only that 
uation gains true territory, which gains itself. 


WAL. $3 


And now for the brief practical outcome of all this. Re- 
member, no government is ultimately strong, but in propor- 
tion to its kindness and justice ; and that a nation does not 
strengthen, by merely multiplying and diffusing itself. We 
have not strengthened as yet, by multiplying into America. 
Nay, even when it has not to encounter the separating condi 
tions of emigration, a nation need not boast itself of multiply- 
ing on its own ground, if it multiplies only as flies or locusts 
do, with the god of flies for its god. It multiplies its strength 
only by increasing as one great family, in perfect fellowship 
and brotherhood. And lastly, it does not strengthen itself 
by seizing dominion over races whom if cannot benefit. Aus- 
tria is not strengthened, but weakened, by her grasp of Lom- 
bardy ; and whatever apparent increase of majesty and of 
wealth may have accrued to us from the possession of India, 
whether these prove to us ultimately power or weakness, de- 
pends wholly on the degree in which our influence on the 
native race shall be benevolent and exalting. But, as it is at 
their own peril that any race extends their dominion in mere 
desire of power, so it 1s at their own still greater peril that 
they refuse to undertake aggressive war, according to their 
force, whenever they are assured that their authority would 
be helpful and protective. Nor need you listen to any sophis- 
tical objection of the impossibility of knowing when a people’s 
help is needed, or when not. Make your national conscience 
clean, and your national eyes will soon be clear. No man 
who is truly ready to take part in a noble quarrel will ever 
stand long in doubt by whom, or in what cause, his aid is 
needed. I hold it my duty to make no political statement of 
any special bearing in this presence; but I tell you broadly 
and boldly, that, within these last ten years, we English have, 
as a knightly nation, lost our spurs: we have fought where 
we should not have fought, for gain; and we have been pas- 
sive where we should not have been passive, for fear. I tell 
you that the principle of non-intervention, as now preached 
among us, is as selfish and cruel as the worst frenzy of con- 
quest, and differs from it only by being not only malignant, 
but dastardly. 


54 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


I know, however, that my opinions on this subject differ toa 
widely from those ordinarily held, to be any farther intruded 
upon you ; and therefore I pass lastly to examine the condi- 
tions of the third kind of noble war ;—war waged simply for 
defence of the country in which we were born, and for the 
maintenance and execution of her laws, by whomsoever threat- 
ened or defied. It is to this duty that I suppose most men 
entering the army consider themselves in reality to be bound, 
and I want you now to reflect what the laws of mere defence 
are ; and what the soldier’s duty, as now understood, or sup- 
posed to be understood. You have solemnly devoted your- 
selves to be English soldiers, for the guardianship of England. 
I want you to feel what this vow of yours indeed means, or is 
eradually coming to mean. You take it upon you, first, while 
you are sentimental schoolboys; you go into your military 
convent, or barracks, just as a girl goes into her convent while 
she is a sentimental schoolgirl; neither of you then know 
what you are about, though both the good soldiers and good 
nuns make the best of it afterwards. You don’t understand 
perhaps why I call you ‘sentimental’ schoolboys, when you 
go into the army? Because, on the whole, it is love of adven- 
ture, of excitement, of fine dress and of the pride of fame, all 
which are sentimental motives, which chiefly make a boy like 
going into the Guards better than into a counting-house. 
You fancy, perhaps, that there is a severe sense of duty mixed 
with these peacocky motives? And in the best of you, there 
is; but do not think that it is principal. If you cared to do 
your duty to your country in a prosaic and unsentimental 
way, depend upon it, there is now truer duty to be done in 
raising harvests than in burning them; more in building 
houses, than in shelling them—more in winning money by 
your own work, wherewith to help men, than in taxing other 
people’s work, for money wherewith to slay men; more duty 
finally, in honest and unselfish living than in honest and un- 
selfish dying, though that seems to your boys’ eyes the bray- 
est. So far then, as for your own honour, and the honour of 
your families, you choose brave death in a red coat before 
brave life in a black one, you are sentimental; and now see 


WAR. 85 


what this passionate vow of yours comes to. For a little 
while you ride, and you hunt tigers or savages, you shoot, and 
are shot; you are happy, and proud, always, and honoured 
and wept if you die ; and you are satisfied with your life, and 
with the end of it; believing, on the whole, that good rather 
than harm of it comes to others, and much pleasure to you. 
But as the sense of duty enters into your forming minds, the 
vow takes another aspect. You find that you have put your- 
selves into the hand of your country as a weapon. You have 
vowed to strike, when she bids you, and to stay scabbarded 
when she bids you ; all that you need answer for is, that you 
fail not in her grasp. And there is goodness in this, and 
ereatness, if you can trust the hand and heart of the Brito- 
mart who has braced you to her side, and are assured that 
when she leaves you sheathed in darkness, there is no need 
for your flash to the sun. But remember, good and noble as 
this state may be, it is a state of slavery. There are different 
kinds of slaves and different masters. Some slaves are 
scourged to their work by whips, others are scourged to it by 
restlessness or ambition. It does not matter what the whip 
is; it is none the less a whip, because you have cut thongs 
for it out of your own souls: the fact, so far, of slavery, is in 
being driven to your work without thought, at another’s bid- 
ding. Again, some slaves are bought with money, and others 
with praise. It matters not what the purchase-money is. 
The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and be 
bought for it. Again, it matters not what kind of work you 
are set on; some slaves are set to forced diggings, others to 
forced marches; some dig furrows, others field-works, and 
others graves. Some press the juice of reeds, and some the 
juice of vines, and some the blood of men. The fact of the 
captivity is the same whatever work we are set upon, though 
the fruits of the toil may be different. But, remember, in 
thus vowing ourselves to be the slaves of any master, it ought 
to be some subject of forethought with us, what work he is 
likely to put us upon. You may think that the whole duty 
of a soldier is to be passive, that it is the country you have left 
behind who is to command, and you have only to obey. But 


86 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


are you sure that you have left all your country behind, or 
that the part of it you have so left is indeed the best part of 
it? Suppose—and, remember, it is quite conceivable—that 
you yourselves are indeed the best part of England ; that you, 
who have become the slaves, ought to have been the masters ; 
and that those who are the masters, ought to have been the 
slaves! If it isa noble and whole-hearted England, whose 
bidding you are bound to do, it is well; but if you are your- 
selves the best of her heart, and the England you have left be 
but a half-hearted England, how say you of your obedience ? 
You were too proud to become shopkeepers: are you satisfied 
then to become the servants of shopkeepers? You were too 
proud te become merchants or farmers yourselves : will you 
have merchants or farmers then for your field marshals? You 
had no gifts of special grace for Exeter Hall: will you have 
some gifted person thereat for your commander-in-chief, to 
judge of your work, and reward it? You imagine yourselves 
to be the army of England: how if you should find yourselves, 
at last, only the police of her manufacturing towns, and the 
beadles of her little Bethels? 

It is not so yet, nor will be so, I trust, for ever; but what 
I want you to see, and to be assured of, is, that the ideal of 
soldiership is not mere passive obedience and bravery ; that, 
so far from this, no country is in a healthy state which has 
separated, even in a small degree, her civil from her military 
power. All states of the world, however great, fall at once 
when they use mercenary armies ; and although it is a less in- 
stant form of error (because involving no national taint of 
cowardice), it is yet an error no less ultimately fatal—it is the 
error especially of modern times, of which we cannot yet 
know all the calamitous consequences —to take away the best 
blood and strength of the nation, all the soul-substance of it 
that is brave, and careless of reward, and scornful of pain, and 
faithful in trust ; and to cast that into steel, and make a mere 
sword of it ; taking away its voice and will; but to keep the 
worst part of the nation—whatever is cowardly, avaricious, 
sensual, and faithless—and to give to this the voice, to this 
the authority, to this the chief privilege, where there is least 


WAR. 87 


capacity, of thought. ‘The fuifilment of your vow for the de- 
fence of England will by no means consist in carrying out 
such a system. You are not true soldiers, if you only mean 
to stand at a shop door, to protect shop-boys who are cheating 
inside. A soldier's vow to his country is that he will die for 
the guardianship of her domestic virtue, of her righteous laws, 
and of her anyway challenged or endangered honour. <A 
state without virtue, without laws, and without honour, he 
is bound not to Gafend : nay, bound to redress by his own 
right hand that which ne sees to be base in her. So sternly 
is this the law of Nature and life, that a nation once utterly 
corrupt can only be redeemed by a military despotism—never 
by talking, nor by its free effort. And the health of any state 
consists simply in this: that in it, those who are wisest shall 
also be strongest; its rulers should be also its soldiers ; or, 
rather, by force of intellect more than of sword, its soldiers 
its rulers. Whatever the hold which the aristocracy of Kne- 
land has on the heart of England, in that they are still always 
in front of her battles, this hold will not be enough, unless 
they are also in front of her thoughts. And truly her thoughts 
need good captain’s leading now, if ever! Do you know what, 
by this beautiful division of labour (her brave men fighting, 
and her cowards thinking), she has come at last to think? 
Here is a bit of paper in my hand,* a good one too, and an 
honest one ; quite representative of the best common public 
thought of England at this moment; and it is holding forth 

* T do not care to refer to the journal quoted, because the article was 
unworthy of its general tone, though in order to enable the audience to 
verify the quoted sentence, I left the number containing it on the table, 
when I delivered this lecture. Butasaying of Baron Liebig’s, quoted at 
the head of a leader on the same subject in the ‘ Daily Telegraph’ of Jan- 
uary 11, 1866, summarily digests and presents the maximum folly of 
modern thought in this respect. ‘ Civilization,’ says the Baron, ‘is the 
economy of power, and English power is coal.’ Not altogether so, my 
chemical friend. Civilization is the making of civil persons, which is a 
kind of distillation of which alembics are incapable, and does not at all 
imply the turning of a small company of gentlemen into a large company 
of ironmongers. And English power (what little of it may be left), is by 
no means coal. but, indeed, of that which, ‘when the whole world turtg 
to coal, then chiefly lives.’ 


88 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


in one of its leaders upon our ‘social welfare,—upon out 
‘ vivid life ’—upon the ‘ political supremacy of Great Britain: 
And what do you think all these are owing to? ‘To what our 
English sires have done for us, and taught us, age after age? 
No: not to that. To our honesty of heart, or coolness of head, 
or steadiness of will? No: nottothese. ‘To our thinkers, or 
our statesmen, or our poets, or our captains, or our martyrs, 
or the patient labour of our poor? No: not to these; or at 
least not to these in any chief measure. Nay, says the journal, 
‘more than any agency, it is the cheapness and abundance of 
our coal which have made us what we are.’ If it be so, then 
‘ashes to ashes’ be our epitaph! and the sooner the better. 
I tell you, gentlemen of England, if ever you would have your 
country breathe the pure breath of heaven again, and receive 
again a soul into her body, instead of rotting into a carease, 
blown up in the belly with carbonic acid (and great that way), 
you must think, and feel, for your Ingland, as well as fight 
for her: you must teach her that all the true greatness she 
ever had, or ever can have, she won while her fields were green 
and her faces ruddy ;—that greatness is still possible for Eng- 
lishmen, even though the ground be not hollow under their 
feet, nor the sky black over their heads ;—and that, when the 
day comes for their country to lay her honours in the dust, her 
crest will not rise from it more loftily because it is dust of 
coal. Gentlemen, I tell you, solemnly, that the day is coming 
when the soldiers of England must be her tutors and the cap- 
tains of her army, captains also of her mind. 

And now, remember, you soldier youths, who are thus in 
all ways the hope of your country ; or must be, if she have 
any hope: remember that your fitness for all future trust de- 
pends upon what you are now. No good soldier in his old 
age was ever careless or indolent in his youth. Manya giddy 
and thoughtless boy has become a good bishop, or a good 
lawyer, or a good merchant; but no such an one ever be- 
came a good general. I challenge you, in all history, to find 
a record of a good soldier who was not grave and earnest in 
his youth. And, in general, I have no patience with people 
who talk about ‘the thoughtlessness of youth’ indulgently, 


WAR. 89 


i had infinitely rather hear of thoughtless old age, and the in- 
dulgence due to that. When aman has done his work, and 
_ nothing can any way be materially altered in his fate, let him 
forget his toil, and jest with his fate, if he will; but what 
excuse can you find for wilfulness of thought, at the very 
time when every crisis of future fortune hangs on your de- 
cisions? A youth thoughtless ! when all the happiness of his 
home for ever depends on the chances, or the passions, of an 
hour! <A youth thoughtless! when the career of all his days 
depends on the opportunity of a moment! <A youth thought- 
less! when his every act is a foundation-stone of future con- 
duct, and every imagination a fountain of life or death! Be 
thoughtless in any after years, rather than now—though, in- 
deed, there is only one place where a man may be nobly 
thoughtless,—his deathbed. No thinking should ever be 
left to be done there. 

Having, then, resolved that you will not waste recklessly, 
but earnestly use, these early days of yours, remember that 
all the duties of her children to England may be summed in 
two words—industry, and honour. I say first, industry, for 
itis in this that soldier youth are especially tempted to fail. 
Yet surely, there is no reason because your life may possibly 
or probably be shorter than other men’s, that you should 
therefore waste more recklessly the portion of it that is 
eranted you; neither do the duties of your profession, which 
require you to keep your bodies strong, in any wise involve 
the keeping of your minds weak. So far from that, the ex- 
perience, the hardship, and the activity of a soldier’s life ren- 
der his powers of thought more accurate than those of other 
men ; and while, for others, all knowledge is often little more 
than a means of amusement, there is no form of science 
which a soldier may not at some time or other find bearing 
on business of life and death. A young mathematician may 
be excused for langour in studying curves to be described 
only with a pencil ; but not in tracing those which are to be 
described with a rocket. Your knowledge of a wholesome 
herb may involve the feeding of an army; and acquaintance 
with an obscure point of geography, the success of a cam: 


90 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


paign. Never waste an instant’s time, therefore; the sin ce? 
idleness is a thousand fold greater in you than in other 
youths ; for the fates of those who will one day be under 
your command hang upon your knowledge ; lost moments 
now will be lost lives then, and every instant which you care- 
lessly take for play, you buy with blood. But there is one 
way of wasting time, of all the vilest, because it wastes, not 
time only, but the interest and energy of your minds. Of all 
the ungentlemanly habits into which you can fall, the vilest is 
betting, or interesting yourselves in the issues of betting. It 
unites nearly every condition of folly and vice; you concen- 
trate your interest upon a matter of chance, instead of upon a 
subject of true knowledge ; and you back opinions which you 
have no grounds for forming, merely because they are your 
own. All the insolence of egotism is in this; and so far as 
the love of excitement is complicated with the hope of win- 
ning money, you turn yourselves into the basest sort of trades- 
men—those who live by speculation. Were there no other 
ground for industry, this would be a sufficient one ; that it 
protected you from the temptation to so scandalous a vice. 
Work faithfully, and you will put yourselves in possession of 
a glorious and enlarging happiness: not such as can be won 
by the speed of a horse, or marred by the obliquity of a ball. 

First, then, by industry you must fulfil your vow to your 
country ; but all industry and earnestness will be useless-un- 
less they are consecrated by your resolution to be in all things 
men of honour ; not honour in the common sense only, but in 
the highest. Rest on the force of the two main words in the 
great verse, integer vitee, scelerisque purus. You have vowed 
your life to England ; give it her wholly—a bright, stainless, 
perfect life—a knightly life. Because you have to fight with 
machines instead of lances, there may be a necessity for more 
ghastly danger, but there is none for less worthiness of char- 
acter, than in olden time. You may be true knights yet, 
though perhaps not equites; you may have to call yourselves 
‘cannonry’ instead of ‘chivalry,’ but that is no reason why 
you should not call yourselves true men. So the first thing 
you have to see to in becoming soldiers is that you make your- 


WAR. 91 


selves wholly true. Courage is a mere matter of course among 
any ordinarily well-born youths ; but neither truth nor gentle- 
ness is matter of course. You must bind them like shields 
about your necks ; you must write them on the tables of your 
hearts. ‘Though it be not exacted of you, yet exact it of your- 
selves, this vow of stainless truth. Your hearts are, if you 
leave them unstirred, as tombs in which a god lies buried. 
Vow yourselves crusaders to redeem that sacred sepulchre. 
And remember, before all things—for no other memory will 
be so protective of you—that the highest law of this knightly 
truth is that under which itis vowed to women. Whomso- 
ever else you deceive, whomsoever you injure, whomsoever 
you leave unaided, you must not deceive, nor injure, nor leave 
unaided according to your power, any woman of whatever 
rank. Believe me, every virtue of the higher phases of manly 
character begins in this ;—in truth and modesty before the 
face of all maidens ; in truth and pity, or truth and reverence, 
to all womanhood. 

And now let me turn for a moment to you,—wives and 
maidens, who are the souls of soldiers ; to you,—mothers, 
who have devoted your children to the great hierarchy of war. 
Let me ask you to consider what part you have to take for 
the aid of those who love you; for if you fail in your part 
they cannot fulfil theirs; such absolute helpmates you are 
that no man can stand without that help, nor labour in his 
own strength. 

I know your hearts, and that the truth of them never fails 
when an hour of trial comes which you recognise for such. 
But you know not when the hour of trial first finds you, nor 
when it verily finds you. You imagine that you are only 
called upon to wait and to suffer ; to surrender and to mourn. 
You know that you must not weaken the hearts of your hus- 
bands and lovers, even by the one fear of which those hearts 
are capable,—the fear of parting from you, or of causing you 
erief. Through weary years of separation, through fearful 
expectancies of unknown fate ; through the tenfold bitterness 
of the sorrow which might so easily have been joy, and the 
tenfold yearning for glorious life struck down in its prime— 


92 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


through all these agonies you fail not, and never will faid. 
But your trial is not in these. To be heroic in danger is little ; 
—youare Englishwomen. To be heroic in change and sway of 
fortune is little ;—for do you not love? ‘To be patient through 
the great chasm and pause of loss is little ;—for do you not 
still love in heaven? But to be heroic in happiness; to bear 
yourselves gravely and righteously in the dazzling of the sun- 
shine of morning ; not to forget the God in whom you trust, 
when He gives you most; not to fail those who trust you, 
when they seem to need you least; this is the difficult forti- 
tude. It is not in the pining of absence, not in the peril of 
battle, not in the wasting of sickness, that your prayer should 
be most passionate, or your guardianship most tender. Pray, 
mothers and maidens, for your young soldiers in the bloom of 
their pride; pray for them, while the only dangers. round 
them are in their own wayward wills; watch you, and pray, 
when they have to face, not death, but temptation. But it 
is this fortitude also for which there is the crowning reward. 
Believe me, the whole course and character of your lovers’ lives 
is in your hands ; what you would have them be, they shall be, 
if you not only desire to have them so, but deserve to have 
them so; for they are but mirrors in which you will see your- 
selves imaged. If you are frivolous, they will be so also; if 
you have no understanding of the scope of their duty, they also 
will forget it ; they will listen,—they can listen,—to no other 
interpretation of it than that uttered from your lips.. Bid 
them be brave ;—they will be brave for you; bid them be 
cowards ; and how noble soever they be ;—they will quail for 
you. Bid them be wise, and they will be wise for you ; mock 
at their counsel, they will be fools for you: such and so ab- 
solute is your rule over them. You fancy, perhaps, as you 
have been told so often, that a wife’s rule should only be over 
her husband’s house, not over his mind. Ah, no! the true 
rule is just the reverse of that ; a true wife, in her husband’s 
house, is his servant; it is in his heart that she is queen. 
Whatever of the best he can conceive, it is her part to be; 
whatever of highest he can hope, it is hers to promise ; all 
that is dark in him she must purge into purity; all that is fail- 


WAR. 93 


ing in him she must strengthen into truth: from her, through 
all the world’s clamour, he must win his praise ; in her, through 
all the world’s warfare, he must find his peace. 

And, now, but one word more. You may wonder, perhaps, 
that I have spoken all this night in praise of war. Yet, truly, 
if it might be, I, for one, would fain join in the cadence 
of hammer-strokes that should beat swords into plough- 
shares : and that this cannot be, is not the fault of us men. 
It is your fault. Wholly yours. Only by your command, 
or by your permission, can any contest take place among us. 
And the real, final, reason for all the poverty, misery, and 
rage of battle, throughout Europe, is simply that you women, 
however good, however religious, however self-sacrificing for 
those whom you love, are too selfish and too thoughtless to 
take pains for any creature out of yourown immediate circles. 
You fancy that you are sorry for the pain of others. Now I 
_ just tell you this, that if the usual course of war, instead of 
unroofing peasants’ houses, and ravaging peasants’ fields, 
merely broke the china upon your own drawing-room tables, 
no war in civilised countries would last a week. I tell you 
more, that at whatever moment you chose to put a period to 
war, you could do it with less trouble than you take any day 
to go out to dinner. You know, or at least you might know if 
you would think, that every battle you hear of has made many 
widows and orphans. We have, none of us, heart enough 
truly to mourn with these. But at least we might put on the 
outer symbols of mourning with them. Let but every Chris- 
tian lady who has conscience toward God, vow that she will 
mourn, at least outwardly, for His killed creatures. Your 
praying is useless, and your churchgoing mere mockery of 
God, if you have not plain obedience in you enough for this. 
Let every lady in the upper classes of civilised Europe simply 
vow that, while any cruel war proceeds, she will wear black ;— 
a mute’s black,—with no jewel, no ornament, no excuse for, or 
evasion into, prettiness.—I tell you again, no war would last a 
week. 

And lastly. You women of England are all now shrieking 
with one voice, —you and your clergymen together, —because 


94 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


you hear of your Bibles being attacked. If you choose ta 
obey your Bibles, you will never care who attacks them. It 
is just because you never fulfil a single downright precept of 
the Book, that you are so careful for its credit: and just be- 
cause you don’t care to obey its whole words, that you are 
so particular about the letters of them. The Bible tells you 
to dress plainly,—and you are mad for finery ; the Bible tells 
you to have pity on the poor,—and you crush them under your 
carriage-wheels ; the Bible tells you to do judgment and jus- 
tice,—and you do not know, nor care to know, so much as 
what the Bible word ‘justice means.’ Do but learn so much 
of God’s truth as that comes to; know what He means when 
He tells you to be just: and teach your sons, that their 
bravery is but a fool’s boast, and their deeds but a firebrand’s 
tossing, unless they are indeed Just men, and Perfect in the 
Fear of God ;—and you will soon have no more war, unless 
it be indeed such as is willed by Him, of whom, though 
Prince of Peace, it is also written, ‘In Righteousness He doth 
judge, and make war.’ 


MUNERA PULVERIS 
Sie ESSAYS 
ON THE ELEMENTS OF 


POLITICAL ECONOMY 





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PREFACE, 





Tur following pages contain, I believe, the first accurate 
analysis of the laws of Political Economy which has been 
published in England. Many treatises, within their scope, 
correct, have appeared in contradiction of the views popu- 
larly received ; but no exhaustive examination of the subject 
was possible to any person unacquainted with the value of 
the products of the highest industries, commonly called the 
“Fine Arts;” and no one acquainted with the nature of 
those industries has, so far as I know, attempted, or even ap- 
proached, the task. 

So that, to the date (1863) when these Essays were pub- 
lished, not only the chief conditions of the production of 
wealth had remained unstated, but the nature of wealth itself 
had never been defined. ‘Every one has a notion, sufficiently 
correct for common purposes, of what is meant by wealth,” 
wrote Mr. Mill, in the outset of his treatise ; and contentedly 
proceeded, as if a chemist should proceed to investigate the 
laws of chemistry without endeavouring to ascertain the nat- 
ure of fire or water, because every one had a notion of them, 
“sufficiently correct for common purposes.” 

But even that apparently indisputable statement was un- 
true. ‘There is not one person in ten thousand who has a 
notion sufficiently correct, even for the commonest purposes, 
of “ what is meant” by wealth; still less of what wealth ever- 
lastingly is, whether we mean it or not ; which it is the busi- 
ness of every student of economy to ascertain. We, indeed, 
know (either by experience or in imagination) what it is to be 
able to provide ourselves with luxurious food, and handsome 


clothes; and if Mr. Mill had thought that wealth consisted 


98 PREFACE. 


only in these, or in the means of obtaining these, it would 
have been easy for him to have so defined it with perfect 
scientific accuracy. But he knew better: he knew that some 
kinds of wealth consisted in the possession, or power of ob- 
taining, other things than these ; but, having, in the studies 
of his life, no clue to the principles of essential value, he was 
compelled to take public opinion as the ground of his science ; 
and the public, of course, willingly accepted the notion of a 
science founded on their opinions. 

I had, on the contrary, a singular advantage, not only in 
the greater extent of the field of investigation opened to me 
by my daily pursuits, but in the severity of some lessons I 
accidentally received in the course of them. 

When, in the winter of 1851, I was collecting materials for 
my work on Venetian architecture, three of the pictures of 
Tintoret on the roof of the School of St. Roch were hanging 
down in ragged fragments, mixed with lath and plaster, round 
the apertures made by the fall of three Austrian heavy shot. 
The city of Venice was not, it appeared, rich enough to repair 
the damage that winter; and buckets were set on the floor of 
the upper room of the school to catch the rain, which not 
only fell directly through the shot holes, but found its way, 
owing to the generally pervious state of the roof, through 
many of the canvases of Tintoret’s in other parts of the 
ceiling. | 

It was a lesson to me, asI have just said, no less direct 
than severe ; for I knew already at that time (though I have 
not ventured to assert, until recently at Oxford,) that the pict- 
ures of Tintoret in Venice were accurately the most precious 
articles of wealth in Europe, being the best existing produc- 
tions of human industry. Now at the time that three of them 
were thus fluttering in moist rags from the roof they had 
adorned, the shops of the Rue Rivoli at Paris were, in obe- 
- dience to a steadily-increasing public Demand, beginning to 
show a steadily-increasing Supply of elaborately-finished and 
coloured lithographs, representing the modern dances of de- 
light, among which the cancan has since taken a distinguished 
place. 


PREFACE. 99 


The labour employed on the stone of one of these litho. 
graphs is very much more than Tintoret was in the habit of 
giving to a picture of average size. Considering labour as 
the origin of value, therefore, the stone so highly wrought 
would be of greater value than the picture ; and since also it 
is capable of producing a large number of immediately sale- 
able or exchangeable impressions, for which the “demand” 
is constant, the city of Paris naturally supposed itself, and on 
all hitherto believed or stated principles of political economy, 
was, infinitely richer in the possession of a large number of 
these lithographic stones, (not to speak of ‘countless oil pict- 
ures and marble carvings of similar character), than Venice 
in the possession of those rags of mildewed canvas, flaunting 
in the south wind and its salt rain. And, accordingly, Paris 
provided (without thought of the expense) lofty arcades of 
shops, and rich recesses of innumerable private apartments, 
for the protection of these better treasures of hers from the 
weather. 

Yet, all the while, Paris was not the richer for these pos- 
sessions. Intrinsically, the delightful lithographs were not 
wealth, but polar contraries of wealth. She was, by the exact 
quantity of labour she had given to produce these, sunk be- 
low, instead of above, absolute Poverty. ‘They not only were 
false Riches—they were true Debi, which had to be paid at 
last—and the present aspect of the Rue Rivoli shows in what 
manner. 

And the faded stains of the Venetian ceiling, all the while, 
were absolute and inestimable wealth. Useless to their pos- 
sessors as forgotten treasure in a buried city, they had in 
them, nevertheless, the intrinsic and eternal nature of wealth ; 
and Venice, still possessing the ruins of them, was a rich city ; 
only, the Venetians had nofa notion sufficiently correct even 
for the very common purpose of inducing them to put slates 
on a roof, of what was “meant by wealth.” 

The vulgar economist would reply that his science had 
nothing to do with the qualities of pictures, but with their 
exchange-value only ; and that his business was, exclusively, 
to consider whether the remains of Tintoret were worth as 


100 PREFAOR. 


many ten-and-sixpences as the impressions which might be 
taken from the lithographic stones. 

But he would not venture, without reserve, to make such 
an answer, if the example be taken in horses, instead of pict- 
ures. The most dull economist would perceive, and admit, 
that a gentleman who had a fine stud of horses was absolute- 
ly richer than one who had only ill-bred and broken-winded 
ones. He would instinctively feel, though his pseudo-science 
had never taught him, that the price paid for the animals, in 
either case, did not alter the fact of their worth: that the 
good horse, though it might have been bought by chance for 
a few guineas, was not therefore less valuable, nor the owner 
of the galled jade any the richer, because he had given a hun- 
dred for it. : 

So that the economist, in saying that his science takes no 
account of the qualities of pictures, merely signifies that he 
cannot conceive of any quality of essential badness or good- 
ness existing in pictures ; and that he is incapable of investi- 
gating the laws of wealth in such articles. Which is the fact. 
But, being incapable of defining intrinsic value in pictures, it 
follows that he must be equally helpless to define the nature 
of intrinsic value in painted glass, or in painted pottery, or in 
patterned stuffs, or in any other national produce requiring 
true human ingenuity. Nay, though capable of conceiving 
the idea of intrinsic value with respect to beasts of burden, 
no economist has endeavoured to state the general princi- 
ples of National Economy, even with regard to the horse or 
the ass. And, in fine, the modern political economists have 
been, without exception, incapable of apprehending the nature of 
intrinsic value at all. 

And the first specialty of the following treatise consists in 
its giving at the outset, and maintaining as the foundation of 
all subsequent reasoning, a definition of Intrinsic Value, and 
Intrinsic Contrary-of-Value ; the negative power having been 
left by former writers entirely out of account, and the positive 
power left entirely undefined. 

But, secondly: the modern economist, ignoring intrinsic 
value, and accepting the popular estimate of things as the 


PREFACE. 101 


only ground of his science, has imagined himself to have as- 
certained the constant laws regulating the relation of this 
popular demand to its supply ; or, at least, to have proved 
that demand and supply were connected by heavenly balance, 
over which human foresight had no power. I chanced, by 
singular coincidence, lately to see this theory of the law of 
demand and supply brought to as sharp practical issue in an- 
other great siege, as I had seen the theories of intrinsic value 
brought, in the siege of Venice. 

I had the honour of being on the committee under the 
presidentship of the Lord Mayor of London, for the victual- 
ling of Paris after her surrender. It became, at one period of 
our sittings, a question of vital importance at what moment 
the law of demand and supply would come into operation, and 
what the operation of it would exactly be: the demand, on 
this occasion, being very urgent indeed ; that of several mill- 
ions of people within a few hours of utter starvation, for any 
kind of food whatsoever. Nevertheless, it was admitted, in 
the course of debate, to be probable that the divine principle 
of demand and supply might find itself at the eleventh hour, 
and some minutes over, in want of carts and horses; and we 
ventured so far to interfere with the divine principle as to 
provide carts and horses, with haste which proved, happily, 
in time for the need; but not a moment in advance of it. It 
was farther recognized by the committee that the divine prin- 
ciple of demand and supply would commence its operations 
by charging the poor of Paris twelve-pence for a penny’s 
worth of whatever they wanted ; and would end its operations 
by offering them twelve-pence worth for a penny, of whatever 
they didn’t want. Whereupon it was concluded by the com- 
mittee that the tiny knot, on this special occasion, was scarcely 
“ dignus vindice,” by the divine principle of demand and sup- 
ply : and that we would venture, for once, in a profane man- 
ner, to provide for the poor of Paris what they wanted, when 
they wanted it. Which, to the value of the sums entrusted 
to us, it will be remembered we succeeded in doing. 

But the fact is that the so-called “law,” which was felt to 
be false in this case of extreme exigence, is alike false in cases 


102 PREFACE. 


of less exigence. Itis false always, and everywhere. Nay 
to such an extent is its existence imaginary, that the vulgar 
economists are not even agreed in their account of it; for 
some of them mean by it, only that prices are regulated by 
the relation between demand and supply, which is partly 
true ; and others mean that the relation itself is one with the 
process of which it is unwise to interfere ; a statement which 
is not only, as in the above instance, untrue; but accurately 
the reverse of the truth: for all wise economy, political or 
domestic, consists in the resolved maintenance of a given re- 
lation between supply and demand, other than the instinctive, 
or (directly) natural, one. 

Similarly, vulgar political economy asserts for a “ law” that 
wages are determined by competition. 

Now I pay my servants exactly what wages I think neces- 
sary to make them comfortable. The sum is not determined 
at all by competition ; but sometimes by my notions of their 
comfort and deserving, and sometimes by theirs. If I were 
to become penniless to-morrow, several of them would cer- 
tainly still serve me for nothing. 

In both the real and supposed eases the so-called “law ” of 
vulgar political economy is absolutely set at defiance. But I 
cannot set the law of gravitation at defiance, nor determine 
that in my house I will not allow ice to melt, when the tem- 
perature is above thirty-two degrees. A true law outside of 
my house, will remain a true one inside of it. It is not, there- 
fore, a law of Nature that wages are determined by competi- 
tion. Still less is it a law of State, or we should not now be 
disputing about it publicly, to the loss of many millions of 
pounds to the country. The fact which vulgar economists 
have been weak enough to imagine a law, is only that, for the 
last twenty years a number of very senseless persons have at- 
tempted to determine wages in that manner; and have, in @ 
measure, succeeded in occasionally doing so. 

Both in definition of the elements of wealth, and in state- 
ment of the laws which govern its distribution, modern politi- 
cal economy has been thus absolutely incompetent, or abso- 
lutely false. And the following treatise is not, as it has been 


PREFACE. 1038 


asserted with dull pertinacity, an endeavour to put sentiment 
in the place of science ; but it contains the exposure of what 
insolently pretended to be a science; and the definition, 
hitherto unassailed—and I do not fear to assert, unassailable 
—of the material elements with which political economy has 
to deal, and the moral principles in which it consists; being 
not itself a science, but “‘a system of conduct founded on the 
sciences, and impossible, except under certain conditions of 
moral culture.” Which is only to say, that industry, frugality, 
and discretion, the three foundations of economy, are moral 
qualities, and cannot be attained without moral discipline: a 
flat truism, the reader may think, thus stated, yet a truism 
which is denied both vociferously, and in all endeavour, by 
the entire populace of Europe; who are at present hopeful of 
obtaining wealth by tricks of trade, without industry ; who, 
possessing wealth, have lost in the use of it even the concep- 
tion,—how much more the habit ?—of frugality ; and who, in 
the choice of the elements of wealth, cannot so much as lose 
—since they have never hitherto at any time possessed,—the 
faculty of discretion. 

Now if the teachers of the pseudo-science of economy had 
ventured to state distinctly even the poor conclusions they 
had reached on the subjects respecting which it is most dan- 
gerous for a populace to be indiscreet, they would have soon 
found, by the use made of them, which were true, and which 
false. 

But on main and vital questions, no political economist has 
hitherto ventured to state one guiding principle. I will in- 
stance three subjects of universal importance. National 
Dress. National Rent. National Debt. _ 

Now if we are to look in any quarter for a systematic and 
exhaustive statement of the principles of a given science, it 
must certainly be from its Professor at Cambridge. 

Take the last edition of Professor Fawcett’s Manual of Po- 
litical Economy, and forming, first clearly in your mind these 
three following questions, see if you can find an answer to 
them. 

I. Does expenditure of capital on the production of luxus 


104 PREFACE, 


rious dress and furniture tend to make a nation rich or poor? 

Il. Does the payment, by the nation, of a tax on its land, 
or on the produce of it, to a certain number of private per- 
sons, to be expended by them as they please, tend to make 
the nation rich or poor ? 

Ill. Does the payment, by the nation, for an indefinite 
period, of interest on money borrowed from private persons, 
tend to make the nation rich or poor? 

These three questions are, all of them, perfectly simple, 
and primarily vital. Determine these, and you have at once 
a basis for national conduct in all important particulars. 
Leave them undetermined, and there is no limit to the dis- 
tress which may be brought upon the people by the cunning 
of its knaves, and the folly of its multitudes. 

J will take the three in their order. 


I. Dress. The general impression on the public mind at 
this day is, that the luxury of the rich in dress and furniture 
is a benefit to the poor. Probably not even the blindest of 
our political economists would venture to assert this in so 
many words. But where do they assert the contrary? Dur- 
ing the entire period of the reign of the late Emperor it was 
assumed in France, as the first principle of fiscal government, 
that a large portion of the funds received as rent from the 
provincial labourer should be expended in the manufacture 
of ladies’ dresses in Paris. Where is the political economist 
in France, or England, who ventured to assert the conclu- 
sions of his science as adverse to this system? As early as 
the year 1857 I had done my best to show the nature of the 
error, and to give warning of its danger ;* but not one of the 
men who had the foolish ears of the people intent on their 
words, dared to follow me in speaking what would have been 
an offence to the powers of trade ; and the powers of trade in 
Paris had their full way for fourteen years more,—with this 
result, to-day,—as told us in precise and curt terms by the 
Minister of Public Instruction,—+ 

* Political Economy of Art. (Smith and Elder, 1857, pp. 65-76.) 


+ See report of speech of M. Jules Simon, in Pall Mall Gazette of 
October 27, 1871. 


PREFACE. 105 


“We have replaced glory by gold, work by speculation, 
faith and honour by scepticism. To absolve or glorify im: 
morality ; to make much of loose women ; to gratify our eyes 
with luxury, our ears with the tales of orgies ; to aid in the 
manceuvres of public robbers, or to applaud them ; to laugh 
at morality, and only believe in success ; to love nothing but 
pleasure, adore nothing but force; to replace work with a 
fecundity of fancies; to speak without thinking ; to prefer 


5? 
noise to glory ; to erect sneering into a system, and lying into 


an institution—is this the spectacle that we have seen ?—is 
this the society that we have been ?” 


Of course, other causes, besides the desire of luxury in fur- 
niture and dress, have been at work to produce such conse- 
quences ; but the most active cause of all has been the pas- 
sion for these ; passion unrebuked by the clergy, and, for the 
most part, provoked by economists, as advantageous to com- 
merce ; nor need we think that such results have been ar- 
rived at in France only ; we are ourselves following rapidly 
on the same road. France, in her old wars with us, never 
was so fatally our enemy as she has been in the fellowship of 
fashion, and the freedom of trade: nor, to my mind, is any 
fact recorded of Assyrian or Roman luxury more ominous, or 
ghastly, than one which came to my knowledge a few weeks 
aco, in England; a respectable and well-to-do father and 
mother, in a quiet north country town, being turned into the 
streets in their old age, at the suit of their only daughter’s 
milliner. 


If. Rent. The following account of the real nature of rent 
is given, quite accurately, by Professor Fawcett, at page 112 
of the last edition of his Polvtical Economy :— 


«very country has probably been subjugated, and grants 
of vanquished territory were the ordinary rewards which the 
conquering chief bestowed upon his more distinguished fol- 
lowers. Lands obtained by force had to be defended by 
force ; and before law had asserted her supremacy, and prop- 
erty was made secure, no baron was able to retain his posses- 
sions, unless those who lived on his estates were prepared to 


106 ° PREFACE. 


defend them... .* As property became secure, and land: 
lords felt that the power of the State would protect them in 
all the rights of property, every vestige of these feudal ten- 
ures was abolished, and the relation between landlord and 
tenant has thus become purely commercial. A landlord offers 
his land to any one who is willing to take it; he is anxious te 
receive the highest rent he can obtain. What are the prin 
ciples which regulate the rent which may thus be paid?” 


These principles the Professor goes on contentedly to in- 
vestigate, never appearing to contemplate for an instant the 
possibility of the first principle in the whole business—the 
maintenance, by force, of the possession of land obtained by 
force, being ever called in question by any human mind. It 
is, nevertheless, the nearest task of our day to discover how 
far original theft may be justly encountered by reactionary 
theft, or whether reactionary theft be indeed theft at all; and 
farther, what, excluding either original or corrective theft, are 
the just conditions of the possession of land. 


II. Debt. Long since, when, a mere boy, I used to sit 
silently listening to the conversation of the London merchants 
who, all of them good and sound men of business, were wont 
occasionally to meet round my father’s dining-table ; nothing 
used to surprise me more than the conviction openly expressed 
by some of the soundest and most cautious of them, that ‘if 
there were no National debt they would not know what to do 
with their money, or where to place it safely.” At the 399th 
page of his Manual, you will find Professor Fawcett giving ex- 
actly the same statement. 


“In our own country, this certainty against risk of loss is 
provided by the public funds ;” 


and again, as on the question of rent, the Professor proceeds, 
without appearing for an instant to be troubled by any mis- 
giving that there may be an essential difference between the 
effects on national prosperity of a Government paying interest 


* The omitted sentences merely amplify the statement; they in o¢ 
wise modify it. 


PREFACE. 107 


on money which it spent in fire works fifty years ago, and ofa 
Government paying interest on money to be employed to-day 
on productive labour. 

That difference, which the reader will find stated and ex: 
amined at length, in §§ 127-129 of this volume, it is the busi- 
ness of economists, before approaching any other question re- 
lating to government, fully to explain. And the paragraphs 
to which I refer, contain, I believe, the only definite statement 
of it hitherto made. 

The practical result of the absence of any such statement is, 
that capitalists, when they do not know what to do with their 
money, persuade the peasants, in various countries, that the 
said peasants want guns to shoot each other with. The peas- 
ants accordingly borrow guns, out of the manufacture of which 
the capitalists get a percentage, and men of science much 
amusement and credit. Then the peasants shoot a certain 
number of each other, until they get tired; and burn each 
other’s homes down in various places. Then they put the 
guns back into towers, arsenals, &c., in ornamental patterns ; 
(and the victorious party put also some ragged flags in 
churches). And then the capitalists tax both, annually, ever 
afterwards, to pay interest on the loan of the guns and gun- 
powder. And that is what capitalists call “knowing what to 
do with their money ;” and what commercial men in general 
call ‘‘ practical” as opposed to ‘‘ sentimental ” Political Econ- 
omy. 

Eleven years ago, in the summer of 1860, perceiving then 
fully, (as Carlyle had done long before), what ‘distress was 
about to come on the said populace of Europe through these 
errors of their teachers, I began to do the best I might, to 
combat them, in the series of papers for the Cornhill Magazine, 
since published under the title of Unto this Last. The editor 
of the Magazine was my friend, and ventured the insertion of 
the three first essays; but the outcry against them became 
then too strong for any editor to endure, and he wrote to me, 
with great discomfort to himself, and many apologies to me, 
that the Magazine must only admit one Economical Essay 
more. 


108 PREFACE. 


I made, with his permission, the last one longer than the 
rest, and gave it blunt conclusion as well as I could—and so 
the book now stands; but, as I had taken not a little pains 
with the Essays, and knew that they contained better work 
than most of my former writings, and more important truths 
than all of them put togetber, this violent reprobation of 
them by the Cornhill public set me still more gravely think- 
ing; and, after turning the matter hither and thither in my 
mind for two years more, I resolved to make it the central 
work of my life to write an exhaustive treatise on Political 
Economy. It would not have been begun, at that time, how- 
ever, had not the editor of Fraser’s Magazine written to me, 
saying that he believed there was something in my theories, 
and would risk the admission of what I chose to write on this 
dangerous subject ; whereupon, cautiously, and at intervals, 
during the winter of 1862-63, I sent him, and he ventured to 
print, the preface of the intended work, divided into four 
chapters. Then, though the Editor had not wholly lost cour- 
age, the Publisher indignantly interfered ; and the readers of 
Fraser, as those of the Cornhill, were protected, for that time, 
from farther disturbance on my part. Subsequently, loss of 
health, family distress, and various untoward chances, pre- 
vented my proceeding with the body of the book ;—seven 
years have passed ineffectually ; and I am now fain to reprint 
the Preface by itself, under the title which I intended for the 
whole, 

Not discontentedly ; being, at this time of life, resigned to 
the sense of failure ; and also, because the preface is com- 
plete in itself as a body of definitions, which I now require 
for reference in the course of my Letters to Workmen; by 
which also, in time, I trust less formally to accomplish the 
chief purpose of Munera Pulveris, practically summed in the 
two paragraphs 27 and 28: namely, to examine the moral 
results and possible rectifications of the laws of distribution 
of wealth, which have prevailed hitherto without debate 
among men. Laws which ordinary economists assume to be 
inviolable, and which ordinary socialists imagine to be on the 
eve of total abrogation. But they are both alike deceived. 


PREFACE. 109 


The laws which at present regulate the possession of wealth 
are unjust, because the motives which provoke to its attain- 
ment are impure; but no socialism can effect their abroga- 
tion, unless it can abrogate also covetousness and pride, which 
it is by no means yet in the way of doing. Nor can the 
change be, in any case, to the extent that has been imagined. 
Extremes of luxury may be forbidden, and agony of penury 
relieved ; but nature intends, and the utmost efforts of social- 
ism will not hinder the fulfilment of her intention, that a 
provident person shall always be richer than a spendthrift; 
and an ingenious one more comfortable than a fool. But, 
indeed, the adjustment of the possession of the products of 
industry depends more on their nature than their quantity, 
and on wise determination therefore of the aims of industry. 
A nation which desires true wealth, desires it moderately, 
and can therefore distribute it with kindness, and possess it 
with pleasure ; but one which desires false wealth, desires it 
immoderately, and can neither dispense it with justice, nor 
enjoy it in peace. 

Therefore, needing, constantly in my present work, to refer 
to the definitions of true and false wealth given in the fol- 
lowing Essays, I republish them with careful revisal. They 
were written abroad ; partly at Milan, partly during a winter 
residence on the south-eastern slope of the Mont Saléve, near 
Geneya ; and sent to London in as legible MS. as I could 
write ; but I never revised the press sheets, and have been 
obliged, accordingly, now to amend the text here and there, 
or correct it in unimportant particulars. Wherever any 
modification has involved change in the sense, it is enclosed 
in square brackets ; and what few explanatory comments I 

ave felt it necessary to add, have been indicated in the same 
manner. No explanatory comments, I regret to perceive, will 
suffice to remedy the mischief of my affected concentration of 
language, into the habit of which I fell by thinking too long 
over particular passages, in many and many a solitary walk 
towards the mountains of Bonneville or Annecy. But I never 
intended the book for anything else than a dictionary of 
reference, and that for earnest readers ; who will, I have good 


£10 PREFACE. 


hope, if they find what they want in it, forgive the affectedly 
curt expressions. 

The Essays, as originally published, were, as I have just 
stated, four in number. I have now, more conveniently, 
divided the whole into six chapters; and (as I purpose 
throughout this edition of my works) numbered the para- 
graphs. 

I inscribed the first volume of this series to the friend who 
aided me in chief sorrow. Let me inscribe the second to 
the friend and guide who has urged me to all chief labour, 
Tuomas CartyLe. 


I would that some better means were in my power of 
showing reverence to the man who alone, of all our masters 
of literature, has written, without thought of himself, what 
he knew it to be needful for the people of his time to hear, if 
the will to hear were in them: whom, therefore, as the time 
draws near when his task must be ended, Republican and 
Free-thoughted England assaults with impatient reproach ; 
and out of the abyss of her cowardice in policy and dis- 
honour in trade, sets the hacks of her literature to speak evil, 
grateful to her ears, of the Solitary Teacher who has asked 
her to be brave for the help of Man, and just, for the love 
of God. , 


Denmark Fill, 
25th November, 1871. 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 


‘¢Te maris et terre numeroque carentis arene 
Mensorem cohibent, Archyta, 
Pulveris exigui prope litus parva Matinum 
Munera.”’ : 


CHAPTER TI. 
DEFINITIONS. 


1. As domestic economy regulates the acts and habits of a 
household, Political economy regulates those of a society or 
State, with reference to the means of its maintenance. 

Political economy is neither an art nor a science; but a 
system of conduct and legislature, founded on the sciences, 
directing the arts, and impossible, except under certain con- 
ditions of moral culture. 

2. The study which lately in England has been called Po- 
litical Economy is in reality nothing more than the investiga- 
tion of some accidental phenomena of modern commercial 
operations, nor has it been true in its investigation even of 
these. It has no connection whatever with political economy, 
as understood and treated of by the great thinkers of past 
ages ; and as long as its unscholarly and undefined statements 
are allowed to pass under the same name, every word written 
on the subject by those thinkers—and chiefly the words of 
Plato, Xenophon, Cicero and Bacon—must be nearly useless 
to mankind. The reader must not, therefore, be surprised at 
the care and insistance with which I have retained the literal 
and earliest sense of all important terms used in these papers ; 


112 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


for a word is usually well made at the time it is first wanted + 
its youngest meaning has in it the full strength of its youth; 
subsequent senses are commonly warped or weakened ; and 
as all careful thinkers are sure to have used their words ac- 
curately, the first condition, in order to be able to avail our 
selves of their sayings at all, is firm definition of terms. 

3. By the “maintenance” of a State is to be understood 
the support of its population in healthy and happy life ; and 
the increase of their numbers, so far as that increase is con- 
sistent with their happiness. It is not the object of political 
economy to increase the numbers of a nation at the cost of 
common health or comfort; nor to increase indefinitely the 
comfort of individuals, by sacrifice of surrounding lives, or 
possibilities of life. . 

4, The assumption which lies at the root of nearly all er- 
roneous reasoning on political economy,—namely, that its 
object is to accumulate money or exchangeable property,— 
may be shown in a few words to be without foundation. For 
no economist would admit national economy to be legitimate 
which proposed to itself only the building of a pyramid of 
gold. He would declare the gold to be wasted, were it to re- 
main in the monumental form, and would say it ought to be 
employed. But to what end? LEHither it must be used only to 
gain more gold, and build a larger pyramid, or for some pur- 
pose other than the gaining of gold. And this other purpose, 
however at first apprehended, will be found to resolve itself 
finally into the service of man ;—that is to say, the extension, 
defence, or comfort of his life. The golden pyramid may per: 
haps be providently built, perhaps improvidently ; but the 
wisdom or folly of the accumulation can only be determined 
by our having first clearly stated the aim of all economy, 
namely, the extension of life. 

If the accumulation of money, or of exchangeable property, 
were a certain means of extending existence, it would be use- 
less, in discussing economical questions, to fix our attention 
upon the more distant object—life—instead of the immediate 
one—money. But it is not so. Money may sometimes be 
accumulated at the cost of life, or by limitations of it ; that ig 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 113 


to say, either by hastening the deaths of men, or preventing 
their births. It is therefore necessary to keep clearly in view 
the ultimate object of economy; and to determine the expe- 
diency of minor operations with reference to that ulterior end. 

5. It has been just stated that the object of political economy 
is the continuance not only of life, but of healthy and happy 
life. But all true happiness is both a consequence and cause 
of life: it is a sign of its vigor, and source of its continuance. 
All true suffering is in like manner a consequence and cause 
of death. I shall therefore, in future, use the word ‘“ Life” 
singly : but let it be understood to include in its signification 
the happiness and power of the entire human nature, body 
and soul. 

6. That human nature, as its Creator made it, and main- 
tains it wherever His laws are observed, is entirely harmoni- 
ous. No physical error can be more profound, no moral error 
more dangerous, than that involved in the monkish doctrine 
of the opposition of body to soul. No soul can be perfect 
in an imperfect body: no body perfect without perfect soul. 
Every right action and true thought sets the seal of its beauty 
on person and face; every wrong action and foul thought its 
seal of distortion ; and the various aspects of humanity might 
be read as plainly as a printed history, were it not that the 
impressions are so complex that it must always in some cases 
(and, in the present state of our knowledge, in all cases) be 
impossible to decipher them completely. Nevertheless, the 
face of a consistently just, and of a consistently unjust person, 
may always be rightly distinguished ata glance; and if the 
qualities are continued by descent through a generation or 
two, there arises a complete distinction of race. Both moral 
and physical qualities are communicated by descent, far more 
than they can be developed by education ; (though both may 
be destroyed by want of education), and there is as yet no as- 
certained limit to the nobleness of person and mind which the 
human creature may attain, by persevering observance of the 
laws of God respecting its birth and training. 

7. We must therefore yet farther define the aim of political 
economy to be “The multiplication of human life at the high- 


114 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


est standard.” It might at first seem questionable whethet 
we should endeavour to maintain a small number of persons 
of the highest type of beauty and intelligence, or a larget 
number of an inferior class. But I shall be able to show in 
the sequel, that the way to maintain the largest number is 
first to aim at the highest standard. Determine the noblest 
type of man, and aim simply at maintaining the largest possi- 
ble number of persons of that class, and it will be found that 
the largest possible number of every healthy subordinate class 
must necessarily be produced also. 

8. The perfect type of manhood, as just stated, involves 
the perfections (whatever we may hereafter determine these 
to be) of his body, affections, and intelligence. The material 
things, therefore, which it is the object of political economy 
to produce and use, (or accumulate for use,) are things which 
serve either to sustain and comfort the body, or exercise 
rightly the affections and form the intelligence.* Whatever 
truly serves either of these purposes is ‘‘ useful” to man, 
wholesome, healthful, helpful, or holy. By seeking such 
things, man prolongs and increases his life upon the earth. 

On the other hand, whatever does not serve either of these 
purposes,—much more whatever counteracts them,—is in like 
manner useless to man, unwholesome, unhelpful, or unholy ; 
and by seeking such things man shortens and diminishes his 
life upon the earth. 

9. And neither with respect to things useful or useless can 
man’s estimate of them alter their nature. Certain sub- 
stances being good for his food, and others noxious to him, 
what he thinks or wishes respecting them can neither change, 
nor prevent, their power. If he eats corn, he will live ; if 
nightshade, he will die. If he produce or make good and 
beautiful things, they will Re-Create him ; (note the solemnity 
and weight of the word) ; if bad and ugly things, they will 
*‘corrupt” or “break in pieces ”—-that is, in the exact degree 
of their power, Kill him. For every hour of labour, however 
enthusiastic or well intended, which he spends for that which 
is not bread, so much possibility of life is lost to him. Hig 

* See Appendix I. 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 115 


fancies, likings, beliefs, however brilliant, eager, or obstinate, 
are of no avail if they are set ona false object. Of all that 
he has laboured for, the eternal law of heaven and earth meas- 
ures out to him for reward, to the utmost atom, that part 
which he ought to have laboured for, and withdraws from 
him (or enforces on him, it may be) inexorably, that part 
which he ought not to have laboured for until, on his summer 
threshing-floor, stands his heap of corn ; little or much, not 
according to his labour, but to his discretion. No ‘ com- 
mercial arrangements,” no painting of surfaces, nor alloying 
of substances, will avail him a pennyweight. Nature asks of 
him calmly and inevitably, What have you found, or formed— 
the right thing or the wrong? By the right thing you shall 
live ; by the wrong you shall die. 

10. To thoughtless persons it seems otherwise. The world 
looks to them as if they could cozen it out of some ways and 
means of life. Butthey cannot cozen rr: they can only cozen 
their neighbours. The world is not to be cheated of a grain ; 
not so much as a breath of its air can be drawn surreptitiously. 
For every piece of wise work done, so much life is granted ; 
for every piece of foolish work, nothing ; for every piece of 
wicked work, so much death is allotted. This is as sure as 
the courses of day and night. But when the means of life 
are once produced, men, by their various struggles and in- 
dustries of accumulation or exchange, may variously gather, 
waste, restrain, or distribute them ; necessitating, in propor- 
tion to the waste or restraint, accurately, so much more death. 
The rate and range of additional death are measured by the 
rate and range of waste ; and are inevitable ;—the only ques- 
tion (determined mostly by fraud in peace, and force in war) 
is, Who is to die, and how? 

11. Such being the everlasting law of human existence, the 
essential work of the political economist is to determine what 
are in reality useful or life-giving things, and by what degrees 
and kinds of labour they are attainable and distributable. 
This investigation divides itself under three great heads ;— 
the studies, namely, of the phenomena, first, of WEALTH; sece 
ondly, of Money ; and thirdly, of Ricugs. 


116 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


These terms are often used as synonymous, but they sig. 
nify entirely different things. ‘ Wealth” consists of things 
in themselves valuable ; ‘‘ Money,” of documentary claims to 
the possession of such things; and “ Riches” is a relative 
term, expressing the magnitude of the possessions of one 
person or society as compared with those of other persons or 
societies. 

The study of Wealth is a province of natural science :—it 
deals with the essential properties of things. 

The study or Money is a province of commercial science :— 
it deals with conditions of engagement and exchange. 

The study of Riches is a province of moral science :—it 
deals with the due relations of men to each other in regard of 
material possessions ; and with the just laws of their associa- 
tion for purposes of labour. 

I shall in this first chapter shortly sketch out the range of 
subjects which will come before us as we follow these three 
branches of inquiry. 

12. And first of Weratrn, which, it has been said, consists 
of things essentially valuable. We now, therefore, need a 
definition of ‘ value.” 

“Value” signifies the strength, or “availing” of anything 
towards the sustaining of life, and is always two-fold ; that is 
to say, primarily, 1nrRinsic, and secondarily, ErrEcTuaL. 

The reader must, by anticipation, be warned against confus- 
ing value with cost, or with price. Value is the life-giving 
power of anything ; cost, the quantity of labour required to pro- 
duce it ; price, the quantity of labour which its possessor will 
take in exchange for it.* Cost and price are commercial condi- 
tions, to be studied under the head of money. 

13. Intrinsic value is the absolute power of anything to 
support life. A sheaf of wheat of given quality and weight 
has in it a measurable power of sustaining the substance of 
the body ; a cubic foot of pure air, a fixed power of sustain- 
ing its warmth ; andacluster of flowers of given beauty a fixed 
power of enlivening or animating the senses and heart. 


[* Observe these definitions,—they are of much importance,—and con 
nect with them the sentences in italics on this and the next page. ] 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 1¥F 


It does not in the least affect the intrinsic value of the 
wheat, the air, or the flowers, that men refuse or despise them. 
Used or not, their own power is in them, and that particular 
power is in nothing else. 

14. But in order that this value of theirs may become ef- 
fectual, a certain state is necessary in the recipient of it. The 
digesting, breathing, and perceiving functions must be perfect 
in the human creature before the food, air, or flowers can be- 
come of their full value to it. The production of effectual val- 
ue, therefore, always involves two needs: first, the production of 
a thing essentially useful; then the production of the capacity 
to use it. Where the intrinsic value and acceptant capacity 
come together there is Effectual value, or wealth ; where 
there is either no intrinsic value, or no acceptant capacity, 
there is no effectual value ; that is to say, no wealth. A horse 
is no wealth to us if we cannot ride, nor a picture if we can- 
not see, nor can any noble thing be wealth, except to a noble per- 
son. As the aptness of the user increases, the effectual value 
of the thing used increases ; and in its entirety can co-exist 
only with perfect skill of use, and fitness of nature. 

15. Valuable material things may be conveniently referred 
to five heads : 

(i.) Land, with its associated air, water, and organisms. 

(ii.) Houses, furniture, and instruments. 

(iii.) Stored or prepared food, medicine, and articles of bod- 
ily luxury, including clothing. 

(iv.) Books. 

(v.) Works of art. 

The conditions of value in these things are briefly as fol- 
lows :— 

16. (i.) Land. Its value is twofold; first, as producing 
food and mechanical power ; secondly, as an object of sight 
and thought, producing intellectual power. 

Its value, as a means of producing food and mechanical 
power, varies with its form (as mountain or plain), with its 
substance (in soil or mineral contents), and with its climate. 
All these conditions of intrinsic value must be known and com- 
plied with by the men who have to deal with it, in order to 


118 MUNERA PUL VERIS, 


give effectual value ; but at any given time and place, the in. 
trinsic value is fixed: such and such a piece of land, with its 
associated lakes and seas, rightly treated in surface and sub- 
stance, can produce precisely so much food and power, and 
no more. 

The second element of value in land being its beauty. 
united with such conditions of space and form as are neces- 
sary for exercise, and for fullness of animal life, land of the 
highest value in these respects will be that lying in temperate 
climates, and boldly varied in form ; removed from unhealthy 
or dangerous influences (as of miasm or volcano) ; and capa- 
ble of sustaining a rich fauna and flora. Such land, care- 
fully tended by the hand of man, so far as to remove from 
it unsightlinesses and evidences of decay, guarded from vio 
lence, and inhabited, under man’s affectionate protection, 
by every kind of living creature that can occupy it in peace, 
is the most precious “property ” that human beings can pos- 
SESS. 

17. (i.) Buildings, furniture, and instruments. 

The value of buildings consists, first, in permanent strength, 
with convenience of form, ‘of size, and of position ; so as to 
render employment peaceful, social intercourse easy, tempera- 
ture and air healthy. The advisable or possible magnitude of 
cities and mode of their distribution in squares, streets, 
courts, &c.; the relative value of sites of land, and the modes 
of structure which are healthiest and most permanent, have to 
be studied under this head. 

The value of buildings consists secondly in historical asso- 
ciation, and architectural beauty, of which we have to examine 
the influence on manners and life. 

The value of instruments consists, first, in their power of 
shortening labour, or otherwise accomplishing what human 
strength unaided could not. The kinds of work which are 
severally best accomplished by hand or by machine ;—the ef- 
fect of machinery in gathering and multiplying population, 
and its influence on the minds and bodies of such population ; 
together with the conceivable uses of machinery on a colossal 
scale in accomplishing mighty and useful works, hitherto un 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 119 


thought of, such as the deepening of large river channels ;— 
changing the surface of mountainous districts ;—irrigating 
tracts of desert in the torrid zone ;—breaking up, and thus 
rendering capable of quicker fusion, edges of ice in the north- 
ern and southern Arctic seas, &c., so rendering parts of the 
earth habitable which hitherto have been lifeless, are to be 
studied under this head. 

The value of instruments is, secondarily, in their aid to ab- 
stract sciences. The degree in which the multiplication of 
such instruments should be encouraged, so as to make them, 
if large, easy of access to numbers (as costly telescopes), or so 
cheap as that they might, in a serviceable form, become a 
common part of the furniture of households, is to be consid- 
ered under this head.* ‘ 

18. (ii.) Food, medicine, and articles of luxury. Under 
this head we shall have to examine the possible methods of 
obtaining pure food in such security and equality of supply 
as to avoid both waste and famine: then the economy of 
medicine and just range of sanitary law: finally the economy 
of luxury, partly an esthetic and partly an ethical question. 

19. (iv.) Books. The value of these consists, 

First, in their power of preserving and communicating the 
knowledge of facts. 

Secondly, in their power of exciting vital or noble emotion 
and intellectual action. They have also their corresponding 
negative powers of disguising and effacing the memory of 
facts, and killing the noble emotions, or exciting base ones. 
Under these two heads we have to consider the economical 
and educational value, positive and negative, of literature ;— 
the means of producing and educating good authors, and the 
means and advisability of rendering good books generally ac- 
cessible, and directing the reader’s choice to them. 


[* I cannot now recast these sentences, pedantic in their generaliza- 
tion, and intended more for index than statement, but I must guard 
the reader from thinking that I ever wish for cheapness by bad quality. 
A poor boy need not always learn mathematics; but. if you set him te 
do so, have the farther kindness to give him good compasses, not cheap 
ones, whose points bend like lead. | 


120 MUNERA PUL VERIS. 


20. (v.) Works of art. The value of these is of the same 
nature as that of books ; but the laws of their production and 
possible modes of distribution are very different, and require 
separate examination. 


21. Ii—Monry. Under this head, we shall have to ex- 
amine the laws of currency and exchange; of which I will 
note here the first principles. 

Money has been inaccurately spoken of as merely a means 
of exchange. But it is far more than this. It isa document- 
ary expression of legal claim. It is not wealth, but a docu- 
mentary claim to wealth, being the sign of the relative quan- 
tities of it, or of the labour producing it, to which, at a given 
time, persons, or societies, are entitled. . 

If all the money in the world, notes and gold, were de- 
stroyed in an instant, it would leave the world neither richer 
nor poorer than it was. But it would leave the individual 
inhabitants of it in different relations. 

Money is, therefore, correspondent in its nature to the 
title-deed of anestate. Though the deed be burned, the 
estate still exists, but the right to it has become dispu- 
table. 

22. The real worth of money remains unchanged, as long | 
as the proportion of the quantity of existing money to the 
quantity of existing wealth or available labour remains un- 
changed. 

If the wealth increases, but not the money, the worth of 
the money increases; if the money increases, but not the 
wealth, the worth of the money diminishes. 

23. Money, therefore, cannot be arbitrarily multiplied, any 
more than title-deeds can. So long as the existing wealth or 
available labour is not fully represented by the currency, the 
currency may be increased without diminution of the assigned 
worth of its pieces. But when the existing wealth, or avail- 
able labour is once fully represented, every piece of money 
thrown into circulation diminishes the worth of every other 
existing piece, in the proportion it bears to the number of 
them, provided the new piece be received with equal credit ; 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 121 


if not, the depreciation of worth takes place, according to the 
degree of its credit. 

24. When, however, new money, composed of some sub- 
stance of supposed intrinsic value (as of gold), is brought into 
the market, or when new notes are issued which are sup- 
posed to be deserving of credit, the desire to obtain the money 
will, under certain circumstances, stimulate industry: an ad- 
ditional quantity of wealth is immediately produced, and if 
this be in proportion to the new claims advanced, the value 
of the existing currency is undepreciated. If the stimulus 
given be so great as to produce more goods than are pro- 
portioned to the additional coinage, the worth of the exist- 
ing currency will be raised. 

Arbitrary control and issues of currency affect the produc- 
tion of wealth, by acting on the hopes and fears of men, and 
are, under certain circumstances, wise. But the issue of ad- 
ditional currency to meet the exigencies of immediate ex- 
pense, is merely one of the disguised forms of borrowing or 
taxing. It is, however,in the present low state of economical 
knowledge, often possible for governments to venture on an 
issue of currency, when they could not venture on an addi- 
tional loan or tax, because the real operation of such issue ig 
not understood by the people, and the pressure of it is irreg- 
ularly distributed, and with an unperceived gradation. 

25. The use of substances of intrinsic value as the materials 
of a currency, is a barbarism ;—a remnant of the conditions of 
barter, which alone render commerce possible among savage 
nations. It is, however, still necessary, partly as a mechanical 
check on arbitrary issues; partly as a means of exchanges 
with foreign nations. In proportion to the extension of civi- 
lization, and increase of trustworthiness in Governments, it will 
cease. So long as it exists, the phenomena of the cost and 
price of the articles used for currency are mingled with those 
proper to currency itself, in an almost inextricable manner: 
and the market worth of bullion is affected by multitudinous 
accidental circumstances, which have been traced, with more 
or less success, by writers on commercial operations: but 
with these variations the true political economist has no more 


122 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


to do than an engineer, fortifying a harbour of refuge against 
Atlantic tide, has to concern himself with the cries or quarrels 
of children who dig pools with their fingers for its streams 
among the sand. 

26. Iil—Ricues. According to the various industry, ca- 
pacity, good fortune, and desires of men, they obtain greater 
or smaller share of, and claim upon, the wealth of the world. 

The inequalities between these shares, always in some de- 
gree just and necessary, may be either restrained by law or 
circumstance within certain limits; or may increase indefi- 
nitely. 

Where no moral or legal restraint is put upon the exercise 
of the will and intellect of the stronger, shrewder, or more 
covetous men, these differences become ultimately enormous. 
But as soon as they become so distinct in their extremes as 
that, on one side, there shall be manifest redundance of pos- 
session, and on the other manifest pressure of need,—the 
terms “riches” and ‘‘poverty” are used to express the op- 
posite states ; being contrary only as the terms ‘‘ warmth ” 
and ‘‘ cold” are contraries, of which neither implies an actual 
degree, but only a relation to other degrees, of temperature. 

27. Respecting riches, the economist has to inquire, first, 
into the advisable modes of their collection ; secondly, into 
the advisable modes of their administration. 

Respecting the collection of national riches, he has to in- 
quire, first, whether he is justified in calling the nation rich, if 
the quantity of wealth it possesses relatively to the wealth of 
other nations, be large; irrespectively of the manner of its 
distribution. Or does the mode of distribution in any wise 
affect the nature of the riches? ‘Thus, if the king alone be 
rich—suppose Croesus or Mausolus—are the Lydians or 
Carians therefore a rich nation? Or if a few slave-masters 
are rich, and the nation is otherwise composed of slaves, is it 
to be called a rich nation? For if not, and the ideas of a cer- 
tain mode of distribution or operation in the riches, and of a 
certain degree of freedom in the people, enter into our idea of 
riches as attributed to a people, we shall have to define the 
degree of fluency, or circulative character which is essential t¢ 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 123 


the nature of common wealth ; and the degree of indepen- 
dence of action required in its possessors. Questions which 
look as if they would take time in answering.* 

28. And farther. Since the inequality, which is the condi- 
tion of riches, may be established in two opposite modes— 
namely, by increase of possession on the one side, and by de- 
crease of it on the other—we have to inquire, with respect to 
any given state of riches, precisely in what manner the cor- 
relative poverty was produced: that is to say, whether by 
being surpassed only, or being depressed also ; and if by be- 
ing depressed, what are the advantages, or the contrary, con- 
ceivable in the depression. For instance, it being one of the 
commonest advantages of being rich to entertain a number of 
servants, we have to inquire, on the one side, what economical 
process produced the riches of the master ; and on the other, 
what economical process produced the poverty of the persons 
who serve him ; and what advantages each, on his own side, 
derives from the result. 

29. These being the main questions touching the collection 
of riches, the next, or last, part of the inquiry is into their 
administration. 

Their possession involves three great economical powers 
which require separate examination: namely, the powers of 
selection, direction, and provision. 

The power of Serecrion relates to things of which the sup- 
ply is limited (as the supply of best things is always). When 
it becomes matter of question to whom such things are to be- 
long, the richest person has necessarily the first choice, unless 
some arbitrary mode of distribution be otherwise determined 
upon. The business of the economist is to show how this 
choice may be a wise one. 

The power of Direction arises out of the necessary relation 
of rich men to poor, which ultimately, in one way or another, 


[* I regret the ironical manner in which this passage, one of great im- 
portance in the matter of it, was written. The gist of it is, that the first 
of all inquiries respecting the wealth of any nation is not, how much it 
has; but whether it is in a form that can be used, and in the possession 
of persons who can use it. | 


124 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


involves the direction of, or authority over, the labour of the 
poor ; and this nearly as much over their mental as their 
bodily labour. The business of the economist is to show how 
this direction may be a Just one. 

The power of Provision is dependent upon the redundance 
of wealth, which may of course by active persons be made 
available in preparation for future work or future profit ; in 
which function riches have generally received the name of 
capital ; that is to say, of head-, or source-material. The 
business of the economist is to show how this provision may 
be a Distant one. 

30. The examination of these three functions of riches will 
embrace every final problem of political economy ;—and, 
above, or before all, this curious and vital problem,—whether, 
since the wholesome action of riches in these three functions 
will depend (it appears), on the Wisdom, Justice, and Far- 
sightedness of the holders; and it is by no means to be as- 
sumed that persons primarily rich, must therefore be just and 
wise,—it may not be ultimately possible so, or somewhat so, to 
arrange matters, asthat persons primarily just and wise, should 
therefore be rich ? 

Such being the general plan of the inquiry before us, I 
shall not limit myself to any consecutive following of it, having 
hardly any good hope of bemg able to complete so laborious 
a work as it must prove to me; but from time to time, as I 
have leisure, shall endeavour to carry forward this part or that, 
as may be immediately possible ; indicating always with ac- 
curacy the place which the particular essay will or should take 
in the completed system. 


CHAPTER IL 
STORE-KEEPING. 


31. Tue first chapter having consisted of little more than def: 
inition of terms, I purpose, in this, to expand and illustrate 
the given definitions. 

The view which has here been taken of the nature of wealth, 
namély, that it consists in an intrinsic value developed by a 
vital power, is directly opposed to two nearly universal con- 
ceptions of wealth. In the assertion that value is primarily 
intrinsic, it opposes the idea that anything which is an object 
of desire to numbers, and is limited in quantity, so as to have 
rated worth in exchange, may be called, or virtually become, 
wealth. And in the assertion that value is, secondarily, de- 
pendent upon power in the possessor, it opposes the idea that 
the worth of things depends on the demand for them, instead 
of on the use of them. Before going farther, we will make 
these two positions clearer. 

32. I. First. All wealth is intrinsic, and is not constituted 
by the judgment of men. ‘This is easily seen in the case of 
things affecting the body ; we know, that no force of fantasy 
will make stones nourishing, or poison innocent ; but it is less 
apparent in things affecting the mind. We are easily—per- 
haps willingly—misled by the appearance of beneficial results 
obtained by industries addressed wholly to the gratification 
of fanciful desire ; and apt to suppose that whatever is widely 
coveted, dearly bought, and pleasurable in possession, must 
be included in our definition of wealth. Itis the more diffi- 
cult to quit ourselves of this error because many things which 
are true wealth in moderate use, become false wealth in im- 
moderate ; and many things are mixed of good and evil,—as 
mostly, books, and works of art,—out of which one person 
will get the good, and another the evil ; so that it seems as if 


126 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


there were no fixed good or evil in the things themselves, but 
only in the view taken, and use made of them. 

But that is not so. The evil and good are fixed; in es- 
sence, and in proportion. And in things in which evil de- 
pends upon excess, the point of excess, though indefinable, is 
fixed ; and the power of the thing is on the hither side for 
good, and on the farther side for evil. And in all cases this 
power is inherent, not dependent on opinion or choice. Our 
thoughts of things neither make, nor mar their eternal force ; 
nor—which is the most serious point for future consideration 
—can they prevent the effect of it (within certain limits) upon 
ourselves. 

33. Therefore, the object of any special analysis of wealth 
will be not so much to enumerate what is serviceable, as to 
distinguish what is destructive ; and to show that it is inevi- 
tably destructive ; that to receive pleasure from an evil thing 
is not to escape from, or alter the evil of it, but to be altered 
by it ; that is, to suffer from it to the utmost, having our own 
nature, in that degree, made eyil also. And it may be shown 
farther, that, through whatever length of time or subtleties of 
connexion the harm is accomplished, (being also less or more 
according to the fineness and worth of the humanity on which 
it is wrought), still, nothing but harm ever comes of a bad 
thing. 

34. So that, in sum, the term wealth is never to be attached 
to the accidental object of a morbid desire, but only to the con- 
stant object of a legitimate one.* By the fury of ignorance, 
and fitfulness of caprice, large interests may be continually 
attached to things unserviceable or hurtful; if their nature 
could be altered by our passions, the science of Political Econ- 
omy would remain, what it has been hitherto among us, the 
weighing of clouds, and the portioning out of shadows. But 
of ignorance there is no science ; and of caprice no law. Their 
disturbing forces interfere with the operations of faithful 


[* Remember carefully this statement, that Wealth consists only in 
the things which the nature of humanity has rendered in all ages, and 
must render in all ages to come, (that is what I meant by ‘‘ constant”), 
the objects of legitimate desire, And see Appendix IL] 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 127 


Economy, but have nothing in common with them: she, the 
calm arbiter of national destiny, regards only essential power 
for good in all that she accumulates, and alike disdains the 
wanderings * of imagination, and the thirsts of disease. 

35. Il. Secondly. The assertion that wealth is not only in- 
trinsic, but dependent, in order to become effectual, on a given 
degree of vital power in its possessor, is opposed to another 
popular view of wealth ;—namely, that though it may always be 
tonstituted by caprice, it is, when so constituted, a substantia! 
thing, of which given quantities may be counted as existing 
here, or there, and exchangeable at rated prices. 

In this view there are three errors. The first and chief is 
the overlooking the fact that all exchangeableness of commod- 
ity, or effective demand for it, depends on the sum of capacity 
for its use existing, here or elsewhere. The book we cannot 
read, or picture we take no delight in, may indeed be called 
part of our wealth, in so far as we have power of exchanging 
either for something we like better. But our power of effect- 
ine such exchange, and yet more, of effecting it to advantage, 
depends absolutely on the number of accessible persons who 
ean understand the book, or enjoy the painting, and who will 
dispute the possession of them. ‘Thus the actual worth of 
either, even to us, depends no more on their essential good- 
ness than on the capacity existing somewhere for the perception 
of it ; and it is vain in any completed system of production to 
think of obtaining one without the other. So that, though 
the true political economist knows that co-existence of capac- 
ity for use with temporary possession cannot be always se- 
cured, the final fact, on which he bases all action and admin- 
istration, is that, in the whole nation, or group of nations, he 
has to deal with, for every atom of intrinsic value produced 
he must with exactest chemistry produce its twin atom of ac- 
ceptant digestion, or understanding capacity ; or, in the de- 
eree of his failure, he has no wealth. Nature’s challenge to 
us is, in earnest, as the Assyrians mock; ‘‘I will give thee 
two thousand horses, if thou be able on thy part to set riders 

[* The Wanderings, observe, not the Right goings, of Imagination. 
She is very far from despising these. | 


128 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


upon them.” SBavieca’s paces are brave, if the Cid backs 
him ; but woe to us, if we take the dust of capacity, wearing 
the armour of it, for capacity itself, for so all procession, how- 
ever goodly in the show of it, is to the tomb. 

36. The second error in this popular view of wealth is, that 
in giving the name of wealth to things which we cannot use, 
we in reality confuse wealth with money. The land we have 
no skill to cultivate, the book which is sealed to us, or dress 
which is superfluous, may indeed be exchangeable, but as 
such are nothing more than a cumbrous form of bank-note, of 
doubtful or slow convertibility. As long as we retain pos- 
session of them, we merely keep our bank-notes in the shape 
of gravel or clay, of book-leaves, or of embroidered tissue. 
Circumstances may, perhaps, render such forms the safest, 
or a certain complacency may attach to the exhibition of 
them ; into both these advantages we shall inquire after- 
wards ; I wish the reader only to observe here, that exchange- 
able property which we cannot use is, to us personally, merely 
one of the forms of money, not of wealth. 

87. The third error in the popular view is the confusion of 
Guardianship with Possession ; the real state of men of prop- 
erty being, too commonly, that of curators, not possessors, 
of wealth. 

A man’s power over his property is at the widest range of 
it, fivefold ; it is power of Use, for himself, Administration, to 
others, Ostentation, Destruction, or Bequest: and possession 
is in use only, which for each man is sternly limited; so that 
such things, and so much of them as he can use, are, indeed, 
well for him, or Wealth; and more of them, or any other 
things, are ill for him, or Illth.* Plunged to the lips in 
Orinoco, he shall drink to his thirst measure ; more, at his 
peril : with a thousand oxen on his lands, he shall eat to his 
hunger measure ; more, at his peril. He cannot live in two 
houses at once ; a few bales of silk or wool will suffice for the 
fabric of all the clothes he can ever wear, and a few books 
will probably hold all the furniture good for his brain. Be- 
yond these, in the best of us but narrow, capacities, we have 

* See Appendix III. 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 129 


but the power of administering, or mal-administering, wealth : 
(that is to say, distributing, lending, or increasing it) ;—of ex- 
hibiting it (asin magnificence of retinue or furniture),—of 
destroying, or, finally, of bequeathing it. And with multi- 
tudes of rich men, administration degenerates into curator- 
ship ; they merely hold their property in charge, as Trustees, 
for the benefit of some person or persons to whom it is to be 
delivered upon their death ; and the position, explained in 
clear terms, would hardly seem a covetable one. What 
would be the probable feelings of a youth, on his entrance 
into life, to whom the career hoped for him was proposed in 
terms such as these: “You must work unremittingly, and 
with your utmost intelligence, during all your available years, 
you will thus accumulate wealth to a large amount; but you 
must touch none of it, beyond what is needful for your sup- 
port. Whatever sums you gain, beyond those required for 
your decent and moderate maintenance, and whatever beauti- 
ful things you may obtain possession of, shall be properly 
taken care of by servants, for whose maintenance you will be 
charged, and whom you will have the trouble of superintend- 
ing, and on your death-bed you shall have the power of de- 
termining to whom the accumulated property shall belong, or 
to what purposes be applied.” 

38. The labour of life, under such conditions, would prob- 
ably be neither zealous nor cheerful ; yet the only difference 
between this position and that of the ordinary capitalist is the 
power which the latter supposes himself to possess, and which 
is attributed to him by others, of spending his money at any 
moment. This pleasure, taken in the imagination of power to 
part with that with which we have no intention of parting, is one 
of the most curious, though commonest forms of the Eidolon, 
or Phantasm of Wealth. But the political economist has 
nothing to do with this idealism, and looks only to the practi- 
cal issue of it—namely, that the holder of wealth, in such 
temper, may be regarded simply as a mechanical means of 
collection ; or as a money-chest with a slit in it, not only re- 
ceptant but suctional, set in the public thoroughfare ;—chest 
of which only Death has the key, and evil Chance the distri- 


18) MUNERA PULVERIS. 


bution of the contents. In his function of Lender (which, 
lhowever, is one of administration, not use, as far as he is him. 
self concerned), the capitalist takes, indeed, a more interest- 
ing aspect; but even in that function, his relations with the 
state are apt to degenerate into a mechanism for the conven- 
ient contraction of debt ;—a function the more mischievous, 
because a nation invariably appeases its conscience with re- 
spect to an unjustifiable expense, by meeting it with borrowed 
funds, expresses ils repentance of a foolish piece of business, 
by letting its tradesmen wait for their money, and always 
leaves its descendants to pay for the work which will be of 
the least advantage to them.* 

39. Quit of these three sources of misconception, the 
reader will have little farther difficulty in apprehending the 
real nature of Kffectual value. He may, however, at first not 
without surprise, perceive the consequences involved in his 
acceptanee of the definition. Forif the actual existence of 
wealth be dependent on the power of its possessor, it follows 
that the sum of wealth held by the nation, instead of being 
constant, or calculable, varies hourly, nay, momentarily, with 
the number and character of its holders! and that in chang- 
ing hands, it changes in quantity. And farther, since the 
worth of the currency is proportioned to the sum of material 
wealth which it represents, if the sum of the wealth changes, 
the worth of the currency changes. And thus both the sum 
of the property, and power of the currency, of the state, vary 
momentarily as the character and number of the holders. 
And not only so, but different rates and kinds of variation 
are caused by the character cf the holders of different kinds 
of wealth. The transitions of value caused by the character 
of the holders of land differ in mode from those caused by 
character in holders of works of art; and these again from 
those caused by character in holders of machinery or other 
working capital. But we cannot examine these special phe- 


[* I would beg the reader's very close attention to these 37th and 
88th paragraphs. It would be well if a dogged conviction could be en: 
forced on nations, as on individuals, that, with few exceptions, what 
they cannot at present pay for, they should not at present have. | 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 131 


nomena of any kind of wealth until we have a clear idea of 
the way in which true currency expresses them; and of the 
resulting modes in which the cost and price of any article are 
related to its value. ‘To obtain this we must approach the 
subject in its first elements. 

4(), Let us suppose a national store of wealth, composed of 
material things either useful, or believed to be so, taken charge 
of by the Government,* and that every workman, having pro- 
duced any article involving labour in its production, and for 
which he has no immediate use, brings it to add to this store, 
receiving from the Government, in exchange, an order either 
for the return of the thing itself, or of its equivalent in other 
things, such as he may choose out of the store, at any time 
when he needs them. The question of equivalence itself 
(how much wine a man is to receive in return for so much 
corn, or how much coal in return for so much iron) is a quite 
separate one, which we will examine presently. For the time, 
let it be assumed that this equivalence has been determined, 
and that the Government order, in exchange for a fixed weight 
of any article (called, suppose a), is either for the return of 
that weight of the article itself, or of another fixed weight of 
the article b, or another of the article c, and so on. 

Now, supposing that the labourer speedily and continu- 
. ally presents these general orders, or, in common language, 
“spends the money,” he has neither changed the circum- 
stances of the nation, nor his own, except in so far as he may 
have produced useful and consumed useless articles, or vice 
versd. But if he does not use, or uses in part only, the orders 
he receives, and lays aside some portion of them; and thus 
every day bringing his contribution to the national store, lays 
by some per-centage of the orders received in exchange for it, 
he increases the national wealth daily by as much as he does 
not use of the received order, and to the same amount accu- 
mulates a monetary claim on the Government. It is, of course, 
always in his power, as it is his legal right, to bring forward 
this accumulation of claim, and at once to consume, destroy, 
or distribute, the sum of his wealth. Supposing he never 

* See Appendix IV. 


182 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


does so, but dies, leaving his claim to others, he has enriched 
the State during his life by the quantity of wealth over which 
that claim extends, or has, in other words, rendered so much 
additional life possible in the State, of which additional life 
he bequeaths the immediate possibility to those whom he in- 
vests with his claim. Supposing him to cancel the claim, he 
would distribute this possibility of life among the nation at 
large. 

41. We hitherto consider the Government itself as simply 
a conservative power, taking charge of the wealth entrusted 
to it. ° 

But a Government may be more or less than a conservative 
power. It may be either an improving, or destructive one. 

If it be an improving power, using all the wealth entrusted 
to it to the best advantage, the nation is enriched in root and 
branch at once, and the Government is enabled, for every 
order presented, to return a quantity of wealth greater than 
the order was written for, according to the fructification ob- 
tained in the interim. This ability may be either concealed, 
in which case the currency does not completely represent the 
wealth of the country, or it may be manifested by the contin- 
ual payment of the excess of value on each order, in which 
case there is (irrespectively, observe, of collateral results after- 
wards to be examined) a perpetual rise in the worth of the | 
currency, that is to say, a fall in the price of all articles repre- 
sented by it. 

42. But if the Government be destructive, or a consuming 
power, it becomes unable to return the value received on the 
presentation of the order. 

This inability may either be concealed by meeting demands 
to the full, until it issue in bankruptcy, or in some form of 
national debt ;—or it may be concealed during oscillatory 
movements between destructiveness and productiveness, which 
result on the whole in stability ;—or it may be manifested by 
the consistent return of less than value received on each pre- 
sented order, in which case there is a consistent fall in the 
worth of the currency, or rise in the price of the things repre 
sented by it. 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 135 


43. Now, if for this conception of a central Government, 
we substitute that of a body of persons occupied in industrial 
pursuits, of whom each adds in his private capacity to the 
common store, we at once obtain an approximation to the 
actual condition of a civilized mercantile community, from 
which approximation we might easily proceed into still com- 
pleter analysis. I purpose, however, to arrive at every result 
by the gradual expansion of the simpler conception ; but I 
wish the reader to observe, in the meantime, that both the 
social conditions thus supposed (and I will by anticipation say 
also, all possible social conditions), agree in two great points ; 
namely, in the primal importance of the supposed national 
store or stock, and in its destructibility or improveability by 
the holders of it. 

44. JI. Observe that in both conditions, that of central 
Government-holding, and diffused private-holding, the quan- 
tity of stock is of the same national moment. In the one 
case, indeed, its amount may be known by examination of 
the persons to whom it is confided ; in the other it cannot be 
known but by exposing the private affairs of every individual. 
But, known or unknown, its significance is the same under 
each condition. The riches of the nation consist in the 
abundance, and their wealth depends on .the nature, of this 
store. 

45. IL. In the second place, both conditions, (and all other 
possible ones) agree in the destructibility or improveability 
of the store by its holders. Whether in private hands, or 
under Government charge, the national store may be daily 
consumed, or daily enlarged, by its possessors; and while 
the currency remains apparently unaltered, the property it 
represents may diminish or increase. 

46. The first question, then, which we have to put under 
our simple conception of central Government, namely, ‘ What 
store has it?” is one of equal importance, whatever may be 
the constitution of the State ; while the second question— 
namely, ‘‘ Who are the holders of the store?” involves the 
discussion of the constitution of the State itself. 

The first inquiry resolves itself into three heads : 


154 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


1. What is the nature of the store ? 

2. What is its quantity in relation to the population ? 

3. What is its quantity in relation to the currency ? 

The second inquiry into two: 

1. Who are the Holders of the store, and in what propor. 
tions ? 

2. Who are the Claimants of the store, (that is to say, the 
holders of the eurrency,) and in what proportions ? 

We will examine the range of the first three questions in 
the present paper ; of the two following, in the sequel. 

47. I. Quesrion First. What is the nature of the store? 
Has the nation hitherto worked for and gathered the right 
thing or the wrong? On that issue rest the possibilities of 
its life. 

For example, let us imagine a society, of no great extent, 
occupied in procuring and laying up store of corn, wine, 
wool, silk, and other such preservable materials of food and 
elothng; and that it has a eurrency. representing them. 
Imagine farther, that on days of festivity, the society, discov- 
ering itself to derive satisfaction from pyrotechnics, gradually 
turns its attention more and more to the manufacture of gun- 
powder ; so that an increasing number of labourers, giving 
what time they can spare to this branch of industry, bring in- 
creasing quantities of combustibles into the store, and use 
the general orders received in exchange to obtain such wine, 
wool, or corn, as they may have need of. The currency re- 
mains the same, and represents precisely the same amount of 
material in the store, and of labour spent in producing it. But 
the corn and wine gradually vanish, and in their place, as gradu- 
ally, appear sulphur and saltpetre, till at last the labourers 
who have consumed corn and supplied nitre, presenting on a 
festal morning some of their currency to obtain materials for 
the feast, discover that no amount of currency will command 
anything Festive, except Fire. The supply of rockets is un- 
limited, but that of food, limited, in a quite final manner ; 
and the whole currency in the hands of the society repre- 
sents an infinite power of detonation, but none of existence. 

48, This statement, caricatured as it may seem, is only ex- 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 135 


aggerated in assuming the persistence of the folly to extrem- 
ity, unchecked, as in reality it would be, by the gradual rise 
in price of food. But it falls short of the actual facts of 
human life in expression of the depth and intensity of the 
folly itself. For a great part (the reader would not believe 
how great until he saw the statistics in detail) of the most 
earnest and ingenious industry of the world is spent in pro- 
ducing munitions of war; gathering, that is to say the mate- 
rials, not of festive, but of consuming fire ; filling its stores 
with all power of the instruments of pain, and all affluence of 
the ministries of death. It was no true Trionfo della Morte* 
which men have seen and feared (sometimes scarcely feared) 
s0 long; wherein he brought them rest from their labours. 
We see, and share, another and higher form of his triumph 
now. ‘T'ask-master, instead of Releaser, he rules the dust of 
the arena no less than of the tomb ; and, content once in the 
grave whither man went, to make his works to cease and his 
devices to vanish,—now, in the busy city and on the service- 
able sea, makes his work to increase, and his devices to mul- 
tiply. 

49. To this doubled loss, or negative power of labour, 
spent in producing means of destruction, we have to add, in 
our estimate of the consequences of human folly, whatever 
more insidious waste of toil there is in production of unnec- 
essary luxury. Such and such an occupation (it is said) sup- 
ports so many labourers, because so many obtain wages in 
following it ; but it is never considered that unless there be a 
supporting power in the product of the occupation, the wages 
given to one man are merely withdrawn from another. We 
cannot say of any trade that it maintains such and such a 
number of persons, unless we know how and where the 
money, now spent in the purchase of its produce, would have 
been spent, if that produce had not been manufactured. The 
purchasing funds truly support a number of people in making 


[* I little thought, what Trionfo della Morte would be, for this very 
cause, and in literal fulfilment of the closing words of the 47th para- 
graph, over the fields and houses of Europe, and over its fairest city~ 
within seven years from the day I wrote it. | 


136 MUNERLA PULVERIS. 


This; but (probably) leave unsupported an equal number wha 
are making, or could have made That. The manufacturers 
of small watches thrive at Geneva ;—it is well ;—but where 
would the money spent on small watches have gone, had 
there been no small watches to buy? 

50. If the so frequently uttered aphorism of mercantile 
economy—“ labour is limited by capital,” were true, this ques- 
tion would be a definite one. But it is untrue; and that 
widely. Out of a given quantity of funds for wages, more or 
less labour is to be had, according to the quantity of will with 
which we can inspire the workman ; and the true limit of 
labour is only in the limit of this moral stimulus of the will, 
and of the bodily power. In an ultimate, but entirely unprac- 
tical sense, labour is limited by capital, as it is by matter— 
that is to say, where there is no material, there can be no 
work,—but in the practical sense, labour is limited only by 
the great original capital of head, heart, and hand. Even in 
the most artificial relations of commerce, labour is to capital 
as fire to fuel: out of somuch fuel, you can have only so much 
fire ; but out of so much fuel, you shall have so much fire,— 
not in proportion to the mass of combustible, but to the force 
of wind that fans and water that quenches ; and the appliance 
of both. And labour is furthered, as conflagration is, not so 
much by added fuel, as by admitted air.* 

51. For which reasons, I had to insert, in § 49, the qualify- 
ing “ probably ;” for it can never be said positively that the 
purchase-money, or wages fund of any trade is withdrawn from 
some other trade. The object itself may be the stimulus of 
the production of the money which buys it ; that is to say, the 
work by which the purchaser obtained the means of buying 
it, would not have been done by him unless he had wanted 
that particular thing. And the production of any article not 
intrinsically (nor in the process of manufacture) injurious, is 


[* The meaning of which is, that you may spend a great deal of 
money, and get very little work for it, and that little bad; but having 
good ‘‘air” or ‘‘ spirit,” to put life into it, with very little money, you 
may get a great deal of work, and all good ; which, observe, is an arith 
metical, not at all a poetical or visionary circumstance. | 


MUNERA PULVERIS. - Jai 


useful, if the desire of it causes productive labour in other 
directions. 

52. In the national store, therefore, the presence of things 
intrinsically valueless does not imply an entirely correlative 
absence of things valuable. We cannot be certain that all the 
labour spent on vanity has been diverted from reality, and 
that for every bad thing produced, a precious thing has been 
lost. In great measure, the vain things represent the results 
of roused indolence ; they have been carved, as toys, in extra 
time ; and, if they had not been made, nothing else would 
have been made. Even to munitions of war this principle ap- 
plies ; they partly represent the work of men who, if they had 
not made spears, would never have made pruning hooks, and 
who are incapable of any activities but those of contest. 

53. Thus then, finally, the nature of the store has to be con- 
sidered under two main lights ; the one, that of its immediate 
and actual utility ; the other, that of the past national char- 
acter which it signifies by its production, and future character 
which it must devolop by its use. And the issue of this in- 
vestigation will be to show us that 

Economy does not depend merely on principles of ‘demand 
and supply,” but primarily on what is demanded, and what is 
supplied ; which I will beg of you to observe, and take to 
heart. 


54. If. Question Srconp.— What is the quantity of the store, 
in relation to the population ? 

It follows from what has been already stated that the accu- 
rate form in which this question has to be put is—‘‘ What 
quantity of each article composing the store exists in propor- 
tion to the real need for it by the population ?” But we shall 
for the time assume, in order to keep all our terms at the sim- 
plest, that the store is wholly composed of useful articles, and 
accurately proportioned to the several needs for them. 

Now it cannot be assumed, because the store is large in 
proportion to the number of the people, that the people must 
be in comfort ; nor because it is sraall, that they must be 
in distress. An active and economical race always produces 


138 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


more than it requires, and lives (if it is permitted to do so) in 
competence on the produce of its daily labour. The quantity 
of its store, great or small, is therefore in many respects in- 
different to it, and cannot be inferred from its aspect. Sim- 
ilarly an inactive and wasteful population, which cannot live 
by its daily labour, but is dependent, partly or wholly, on 
consumption of its store, may be (by various difficulties, here- 
after to be examined, in realizing or getting at such store) re- 
tained in a state of abject distress, though its possessions may 
beimmense. But the results always involved in the magni- 
tude of store are, the commercial power of the nation, its 
security, and its mental character. Its commercial power, in 
that according to the quantity of its store, may be the extent 
of its dealings ; its security, in that according to the quantity 
of its store are its means of sudden exertion or sustained en- 
durance ; and its character, in that certain conditions of eivili- 
zation cannot be attained without permanent and continually 
accumulating store, of great intrinsic value, and of peculiar 
nature. * ; 

55. Now, seeing that these three advantages arise from 
largeness of store in proportion to population, the question 
arises immediately, ‘‘Given the store—is the nation enriched 
by diminution of its numbers? Are a successful national spec- 
ulation, and a pestilence, economically the same thing ? 

This is in part a sophistical question; such as it would be 
to ask whether a man was richer when struck by disease which 
must limit his life within a predicable period, than he was 
when in health. He is enabled to enlarge his current ex- 
penses, and has for all purposes a larger sum at his imme- 
diate disposal (for, given the fortune, the shorter the life, the 
larger the annuity) ; yet no man considers himself richer be- 
cause he is condemned by his physician. 

56. The logical reply is that, since Wealth is by definition 
only the means of life, a nation cannot be enriched by its own 
mortality. Or in shorter words, the life is more than the 
meat ; and existence itself, more wealth than the means of ex- 
istence. Whence, of two nations who have equal store, the 

[* More especially, works of great art. ] 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 139 


more numerous is to be considered the richer, provided the 
type of the inhabitant be as high (for, though the relative 
bulk of their store be less, its relative efficiency, or the amount 
of effectual wealth, must be greater). But if the type of the 
population be deteriorated by increase of its numbers, we 
have evidence of poverty in its worst influence; and then, to 
determine whether the nation in its total may still be justifi- 
ably esteemed rich, we must set or weigh, the number of the 
poor against that of the rich. 

To effect which piece of scale-work, it is of course necessary 
to determine, first, who are poor and who are rich; nor this 
only, but also how poor and how rich they are. Which will 
prove a curious thermometrical investigation ; for we shall 
have to do for gold and for silver, what we have done for 
quicksilver ;—determine, namely, their freezing-point, their 
zero, their temperate and fever-heat points; finally, their 
vaporescent point, at which riches, sometimes explosively, as 
lately in America, ‘‘make to themselves wings :”—and corre- 
spondently, the number of degrees below zero at which pov- 
erty, ceasing to brace with any wholesome cold, burns to the 
bone.* 

57. For the performance of these operations, in the strict- 
est sense scientific, we will first look to the existing so-called 
“science” of Political Economy; we will ask it to define for 
us the comparatively and superlatively rich, and the compara- 
tively and superlatively poor; and on its own terms—if any 
terms it can pronounce—examine, in our prosperous Ene- 
land, how many rich and how many poor people there are; 
and whether the quantity and intensity of the poverty is in- 
deed so overbalanced by the quantity and intensity of wealth, 


[* The meaning of that, in plain English, is, that we must find out 
how far poverty and riches are good or bad for people, and what is the 
difference between being miserably poor—so as, perhaps, to be driven 
to crime, or to pass life in suffering—and being blessedly poor, in the 
sense meant in the Sermon on the Mount. For I suppose the people 
who believe that sermon, do not think (if they ever honestly ask them- 
selves what they do think), either that Luke vi. 24. is a merely poetical 
exclamation, or that the Beatitude of Poverty has vet been attained in 
St. Martin’s Lane and other back streets of London, | 


140 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


that we may permit ourselves a luxurious blindness to it, and 
call ourselves, complacently, a rich country. And if we fina 
no clear definition in the existing science, we will endeayour 
for ourselves to fix the true degrees of the scale, and to apply 
them.* 


58. Qurstion Tutrp. What is the quantity of the store in 
relation to the Currency ? 

We have seen that the real worth of the currency, so far as 
dependent on its relation to the magnitude of the store, may 
vary, within certain limits, without affecting its worth in 
exchange. The diminution or increase of the represented 
wealth may be unperceived, and the currency may be taken 
either for more or less than it is truly worth. Usually it is 
taken for much more; and its power in exchange, or credit- 
power, is thus increased up to a given strain upon its relation 
to existing wealth. This credit-power is of chief importance 
in the thoughts, because most sharply present to the expe- 
rience, of a mercantile community: but the conditions of its 
stability + and all other relations of the currency to the mate- 


[* Large plans!—Hight years are gone, and nothing done yet. ButI 
keep my purpose of muking one day this balance, or want of balance, 
visible, in those so seldom used scales of Justice. ] 

+ These are nearly all briefly represented by the image used for the 
force of money by Dante, of mast and sail :— 


Quali dal vento le gonfiate vele 
Caggiono avvolte, poi ché l’alber fiacca 
Tal cadde a terra la fiera crudele. 


The image may be followed out, like all of Dante’s, into as close de- 
tail as the reader chooses. Thus the stress of the sail must be propor- 
tioned to the strength of the mast, and it is only in unforeseen danger 
that a skilful seaman ever carries all the canvas his spars will bear , 
states of mercantile languor are like the flap of the sail in a calm; of 
mercantile precaution, like taking in reefs; and mercantile ruin is in- 
stant on the breaking of the mast. 

[I mean by credit-power, the general impression on the national mind 
that a sovereign, or any other coin, is worth so much bread and cheese 
—so much wine—so much horse and carriage—or so much fine art: it 
may be really worth, when tried, less or more than is thought: the 
thought of it is the credit-power. } 


MUNERA PULVERIS, 141 


rial store are entirely simple in principle, if not in action. 
Far other than simple are the relations of the currency to the 
available labour which it also represents. Yor this relation is 
involved not only with that of the magnitude of the store to 
the number, but with that of the magnitude of the store ta 
the mind, of the population. Its proportion to their number, 
and the resulting worth of currency, are calculable ; but its 
proportion to their will for labour is not. The worth of the 
piece of money which claims a given quantity of the store is, 
in exchange, less or greater according to the facility of ob- 
taining the same quantity of the same thing without having 
recourse to the store. In other words it depends on the im- 
mediate Cost and Price of the thing. We must now, there- 
fore, complete the definition of these terms. 

59. All cost and price are counted in Labour. We must 
know first, therefore, what is to be counted as Labour. 

I have already defined labour to be the Contest of the life 
of man with an opposite. Literally, it is the quantity of 
*‘ Lapse,” loss, or failure of human life, caused by any effort. 
It is usually confused with effort itself, or the application of 
power (opera); but there is much effort which is merely a 
mode of recreation, or of pleasure. The most beautiful ac- 
tions of the human body, and the highest results of the 
human intelligence, are conditions, or achievements, of quite 
unlaborious,—nay, of recreative,—effort. But labour is the 
suffering in effort. It is the negative quantity, or quantity of 
de-feat, which has to be counted against every Feat, and of 
de-fect which has to be counted against every Fact, or Deed 
of men. In brief, it is “that quantity of our toil which we 
die in.” 

We might, therefore, @ priori, conjecture (as we shall ulti- 
mately find), that it cannot be bought, nor sold. Lverything 
else is bought and sold for Labour, but labour itself cannot 
be bought nor sold for anything, being priceless.* The idea 


* The object of Political Economy is not to buy, nor to sell labour, 
but to spare it. Hvery attempt to buy or sell it is, in the outcome, in- 
effectual ; so far as successful, it is not sale, but Betrayal; and the pur- 
chase-money is a part of that thirty pieces which bought, first the great- 


142 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


that it is a commodity to be bought or sold, is the alpha and 
omega of Politico-EKconomie fallacy. 

60. This being the nature of labour, the ‘‘ Cost” of any- 
thing is the quantity of labour necessary to obtain it ;—the 
quantity for which, or at which, it ‘‘ stands” (constat). It is 
literally the ‘“‘ Constancy” of the thing ;—you shall win it— 
move it—come at it, for no less than this. 

Cost is measured and measurable (using the accurate Latin 
terms) only in “labour,” not in “opera.” * It does not matter 
how much work a thing needs to produce it; it matters only 
how much distress. Generally the more the power it requires, 
the less the distress; so that the noblest works of man cost 
less than the meanest. 

True labour, or spending of life, is either of the body, in 
fatigue or pain; of the temper or heart (as in perseverance of 
search for things,—patience in waiting for them,—fortitude 
or degradation in suffering for them, and the like), or of the 
intellect. All these kinds of labour are supposed to be in- 
cluded in the general term, and the quantity of labour is then 
expressed by the time it lasts. So that a unit of labour is 
“an hour’s work ” or a day’s work, as we may determine. t¢ 

61. Cost, like value, is both intrinsic and effectual. Intrin- 
sic cost is that of getting the thing in the right way ; effect- 


est of labours, and afterwards the burial-field of the Stranger; for this 
purchase-money, being in its very smallness or vileness the exactly 
measured opposite of the ‘‘vilis annona amicorum,” makes all men 
strangers to each other. 

* Cicero’s distinction, ‘‘ sordidi questus, quorum oper, non quorum 
artes emuntur,” admirable in principle, is inaccurate in expression, be- 
cause Cicero did not practically know how much operative dexterity is 
necessary in all the higher arts; but the cost of this dexterity is incal- 
eulable. Be it great or small, the ‘‘cost” of the mere perfectness of 
touch in a hammer-stroke of Donatello’s, or a pencil-touch of Correg- 
gio, is inestimable by any ordinary arithmetic. 

[Old notes, these, more embarrassing I now perceive, than elucida 
tory; but right, and worth retaining. | 

+ Only observe, as some labour is more destructive of life than other 
labour, the hour or day of the more destructive toil is supposed to in: 
clude proportionate rest. Though men do not, or cannot, usually take 
such rest, except in death. 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 143 


ual cost is that of getting the thing in the way we set about 
it. But intrinsic cost cannot be made a subject of analytical 
investigation, being only partially discoverable, and that by 
long experience. ffectual cost is all that the political Econ- 
omist can deal with ; that is to say, the cost of the thing un- 
der existing circumstances, and by known processes. 

Cost, being dependent much on application of method, 
varies with the quantity of the thing wanted, and with the 
number of persons who work for it. Itis easy to get a little 
of some things, but difficult to get much ; it is impossible to 
get some things with few hands, but easy to get them with 
many. 

62. The cost and value of things, however difficult to de- 
termine accurately, are thus both dependent on ascertainable 
physical circumstances.* 


* There is, therefore, observe, no such thing as cheapness (in the 
common use of that term), without some error or injustice. <A thing is 
said to be cheap, not because it is common, but because it is supposed 
to be sold under its worth. Everything has its proper and true worth 
at any given time, in relation to everything else; and at that worth 
should be bought and sold. If sold under it, it is cheap to the buyer 
by exactly so much as the seller loses, and no more. Putrid meat, at 
twopence a pound, isnot ‘‘cheaper” than wholesome meat at seven- 
pence a pound; it is probably much dearer; but if, by watching your 
opportunity, you can get the wholesome meat for sixpence a pound, it 
is cheaper to you by a penny, which you have gained, and the seller 
has lost. The present rage for cheapness is either, therefore, simply 
and literally a rage for badness of all commodities, or it is an attempt to 
find persons whose necessities will force them to let you have more than 
you should for your money. It is quite easy to produce such persens, 
and in large numbers; for the more distress there is in a nation, the 
more cheapness of this sort you can obtain, and your boasted cheapness 
is thus merely a measure of the extent of your national distress. 

There is, indeed, a condition of apparent cheapness, which we have 
some right to be triumphant in; namely, the real reduction in cost of 
articles by right application of labour. But in this case the article is 
only cheap with reference to its former price ; the so-called cheapness 
is only our expression for the sensation of contrast between its former 
and existing prices. So soon as the new methods of producing the arti- 
cle are established, it ceases to be esteemed either cheap or dear, at the 
new price, as at the old one, and is felt to be cheap only when accident 
enables it to be purchased beneath this new value, And it is no ad. 


Lit MUNERA PULVERIS. 


But their price is dependent on the human will. 

Such and such a thing is demonstrably good for so much 
And it may Gani icakeatle be had for so much. 

But it remains questionable, and in all manner of ways 
questionable, whether I choose to give so much.* 

This choice is always a relative one. It is a choice to give 
a price for this, rather than for that ;—a resolution to have 
the thing, if getting it does not involve the loss of a better 
thing. Price depends, therefore, not only on the cost of the 
commodity itself, but on its relation to the cost of every other 
attainable thing. 


vantage to produce the article more easily, except as it enables you to 
multiply your population. Cheapness of this kind is merely the dis- 
covery that more men can be maintained on the same ground; and the 
question how many you will maintain in proportion to your additional 
means, remains exactly in the same terms that it did before. 

A form of immediate cheapness results, however, in many cases, 
without distress, from the labour of a population where food is redun- 
dant, or where the labour by which the food is produced leaves much 
idle time on their hands, which may be applied to the production of 
‘‘ cheap ” articles. 

All such phenomena indicate to the political economist places where 
the labour is unbalanced. In the first case, the just balance is to be 
effected by taking labourers from the spot where pressure exists, and 
sending them to that where food is redundant. In the second, the 
cheapness is a local accident, advantageous to the local purchaser, disad- 
vantageous to the local producer. It is one of the first duties of com- 
merce to extend the market, and thus give the local producer his full 
advantage, 

Cheapness caused by natural accidents of harvest, weather, Ke., is 
always counterbalanced, in due time, by natural scarcity, similarly 
caused, Itis the part of wise government, and healthy commerce, so 
to provide in times and places of plenty for times and places of dearth, 
as that there shall never be waste, nor famine. 

Cheapness caused by gluts of the market is merely a disease of 
clumsy and wanton commerce. 

* Price has been already defined (p. 9) to be the quantity of labour 
which the possessor of a thing is willing to take for it. Itis best to 
consider the price to be that fixed by the possessor, because the posses- 
sor has absolute power of refusing sale, while the purchaser has no ab- 
solute power of compelling it ; but the effectual or market price is hee 
at which their estimates soinoide, 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 145 


Farther. The power of choice is also a relative one. It 
depends not merely on our own estimate of the thing, but on 
everybo.ly else’s estimate ; therefore on the number and force 
of the will of the concurrent buyers, and on the existing quan- 
tity of the thing in proportion to that number and force. 

Hence the price of anything depends on four variables. 

(1.) Its cost. 

(2.) Its attainable quantity at that cost. . 

(3.) The number and power of the persons who want it. 

(4.) The estimate they have formed of its desirableness. 

Its value only affects its price so far as it is contemplated 
in this estimate ; perhaps, therefore, not at all. 

63. Now, in order to show the manner in which price is 
expressed in terms of a currency, we must assume these four 
quantities to be known, and the “estimate of desirableness,” 
commonly called the Demand, to be certain. We will take 
the number of persons at the lowest. Let A and B be two 
labourers who “ demand,” that is to say, have resolved to la- 
bour for, two articles, aand 6. Their demand for these arti- 
cles (if the reader likes better, he may say their need) is to be 
conceived as absolute, their existence depending on the get- 
ting these two things. Suppose, for instance, that they are 
bread and fuel, in a cold country, and let a represent the 
least quantity of bread, and b the least quantity of fuel, which 
will support a man’s life fora day. Leta be producible by 
an hour’s labour, but b only by two hours’ labour. 

Then the cost of a is one hour, and of b two (cost, by our 
definition, being expressible in terms of time). If, therefore, 
each man worked both for his corn and fuel, each would have 
to work three hours a day. But they divide the labour for its 
greater ease.* Then if A works three hours, he produces 
3a, which is one a more than both the men want. And if B 
works three hours, he produces only 1} 0, or half of 6 less 
than both want. But if A work three hours and B six, A has 


* This ‘‘ greater ease’ ought to be allowed for by a diminution in the 
times of the divided work; but as the proportion of times would re- 
main the same, I do not introduce this unnecessary complexity inte the 
calculation. 


146 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


3 a, and B has 3 b, a maintenance in the right proportion for 
both for a day and half; so that each might take half a day’s 
rest. But as B has worked double time, the whole of this 
day’s rest belongs in equity to him. Therefore the just ex- 
change should be, A giving two a for one b, has one a and one 
b;—maintenance for a day. B giving one b for two a, has 
two a and two b; maintenance for two days. 

But B cannot rest on the second day, or A would be left 
without the article which B produces. Nor is there any 
means of making the exchange just, unless a third labourer is 
called in, Then one workman, A, produces a, and two, B and 
C, produce 6 :—A, working three hours, has three a ;—B, 
three hours, 14 b ;—C, three hours, 1} b. Band C each give 
half of b for a, and all have their equal daily maintenance for 
equal daily work. 

To carry the example a single step farther, let three arti- 
cles, a, b, and ¢ be needed. 

Let a need one hour’s work, b two, and ce four; then the 
day’s work must be seven hours, and one man in a day’s work 
can make 7 a, or 34 b, or 13 ¢. 

Therefore one A works for a, producing 7 a ; two B’s work 
for b, producing 7 b ; four C’s work for c, producing 7 «. 

A has six a to spare, and gives two a for one 0, and, four a 
for one c. Each B has 23 b to spare, and gives $ b for one a, 
and two b for one c. 

Each C has ? of c to spare, and gives $ ¢ for one b, and 4 of 
ce for one a. 

And all have their day’s maintenance. 

Generally, therefore, it follows that if the demand is con- 
stant,* the relative prices of things are as their costs, or as 
the quantities of labour involved in production. 

64. Then, in order to express their prices in terms of a 
currency, we have only to put the currency into the form of 
orders fora certain quantity of any given article (with us it 
is in the form of orders for gold), and all quantities of other 
articles are priced by the relation they bear to the article 
which the currency claims. 

* Compare Unto this Last, p. 115, et seq. 


MUNERA: PULVERIS. 147 


But the worth of the currency itself is not in the slightest 
degree founded more on the worth of the article which it 
either claims or consists in (as gold) than on the worth of 
every other article for which the gold is exchangeable. It is 
just as accurate to say, “‘so many pounds are worth an acre 
of land,” as ‘‘an acre of land is worth so many pounds.” The 
worth of gold, of land, of houses, and of food, and of all 
other things, depends at any moment on the existing quanti- 
ties and relative demands for all and each; and a change in 
the worth of, or demand for, any one, involves an instantane- 
ously correspondent change in the worth of, and demand for, 
all the rest ;—a change as inevitable and as accurdtely bal- 
anced (though often in its process as untraceable) as the 
change in volume of the outflowing river from some vast 
lake, caused by change in the volume of the inflowing 
streams, though no eye can trace, nor instrument detect, mo- 
tion, either on its surface, or in the depth. 

65. Thus, then, the real working power or worth of the cur- 
rency is founded on the entire sum of the relative estimates 
formed by the population of its possessions ; a change in this 
estimate in any direction (and therefore every change in the 
national character), instantly alters the value of money, in 
its second great function of commanding labour. But we 
must always carefully and sternly distinguish between this 
worth of currency, dependent on the conceived or appreciated 
value of what it represents, and the worth of it, dependent on 
the existence of what it represents. A currency is true, or 
false, in proportion to the security with which it gives claim 
to the possession of land, house, horse, or picture ; but a cur- 
rency is strong or weak,* worth much, or worth little, in pro- 
portion to the degree of estimate in which the nation holds the 
house, horse, or picture which is claimed. Thus the power 
of the English currency has been, till of late, largely based on 
the national estimate of horses and of wine: so that a man 


[* That is to say, the love of money is founded first on the intense- 
ness of desire for given things ; a youth will rob the till, now-a-days, 
for pantomime tickets and cigars; the ‘‘strength” of the currency be: 
ing irresistible to him, in consequenee of his desire for those luxuries. ] 


148 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


might always give any price to furnish choicely his stable, or 
his cellar ; and receive public approval therefor: but if he 
gave the same sum to furnish his library, he was called mad 
or a biblio-maniac. And although he might lose his fortune 
by his horses, and his health or life by his cellar, and rarely 
lost either by his books, he was yet never called a Hippo: 
maniac nor an Oino-maniac; but only Biblio-maniac, because 
the current worth of money was understood to be legiti- 
mately founded on cattle and wine, but not on literature. The 
prices lately given at sales for pictures and MSS. indicate 
some tendency to change in the national character in this re- 
spect, so that the worth of the currency may even come in 
time to rest, in an acknowledged manner, somewhat on the 
state and keeping of the Bedford missal, as well as on the 
health of Caractacus or Blink Bonny; and old pictures be 
considered property, no less than old port. They might have 
been so before now, but that it is more difficult to choose the 
one than the other. 

66. Now, observe, all these sources of variation in the power 
of the currency exist, wholly irrespective of the influences of 
vice, indolence, and improvidence. We have hitherto sup- 
posed, throughout the analysis, every professing labourer 
to labour honestly, heartily, and in harmony with his fellows. 
We have now to bring farther into the calculation the effects 
of relative industry, honour, and forethought; and thus to 
follow out the bearings of our second inquiry: Who are the 
holders of the Store and Currency, and in what proportions ? 

This, however, we must reserve for our next paper— 
noticing here only that, however distinct the several branches 
of the subject are, radically, they are so interwoven in their 
issues that we cannot rightly treat any one, till we have taken 
cognizance of all. Thus the need of the currency in propor 
tion to number of population is materially influenced by the 
probable number of the holders in proportion to the non- 
holders ; and this again, by the number of holders of goods, 
or wealth, in proportion to the non-holders of goods. For as, 
by definition, the currency is a claim to goods which are not 
possessed, its quantity indicates the number of claimants in 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 149 


proportion to the number of holders; and the force and com- 
plexity of claim. For if the claims be not complex, currency 
as a means of exchange may be very small in quantity. A 
sells some corn to B, receiving a promise from B to pay in 
cattle, which A then hands over to C, to get some wine. CO 
in due time claims the cattle from B; and B takes back his 
promise. These exchanges have, or might have been, all 
effected with a single coin or promise ; and the proportion of 
the currency to the store would in such circumstances indi- 
cate only the circulating vitality of it—that is to say, the 
quantity and convenient divisibility of that part of the store 
which the habits of the nation keep in circulation. If a cattle 
breeder is content to live with his household chiefly on meat 
and milk, and does not want rich furniture, or jewels, or books 
—if a wine and corn grower maintains himself and his men 
chiefly on grapes and bread ;—if the wives and daughters of 
families weave and spin the clothing of the household, and 
the nation, as a whole, remains content with the produce of 
its own soil and the work of its own hands, it has little occa- 
sion for circulating media. It pledges and promises little and 
seldom ; exchanges only so far as exchange is necessary for 
life. The store belongs to the people in whose hands it is 
found, and money is little needed either as an expression of 
right, or practical means of division and exchange. 

67. But in proportion as the habits of the nation become 
complex and fantastic (and they may be both, without there- 
fore being civilized), its circulating medium must increase in 
proportion to its store. If every one wants a little of every- 
thing,—if food must be of many kinds, and dress of many 
fashions,—if mulitudes live by work which, ministering to 
fancy, has its pay measured by fancy, so that large prices will 
be given by one person for what is valueless to another,—if 
there are great inequalities of knowledge, causing great in- 
equalities of estimate,—and, finally, and worst of all, if the 
currency itself, from its largeness, and the power which the 
possession of it implies, becomes the sole object of desire 
with large numbers of the nation, so that the holding of it is 
disputed among them as the main object of life :—in each 


150 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


and all of these cases, the currency necessarily enlarges in 
proportion to the store ; and as a means of exchange and di- 
vision, as a bond of right, and as an object of passion, has a 
more and more important and malignant power over the na- 
tion’s dealings, character, and life. 

Against which power, when, as a bond of Right, it becomes 
too conspicuous and too burdensome, the popular voice is api 
to be raised in a violent and irrational manner, leading to 
revolution instead of remedy. Whereas all possibility of 
Economy depends on the clear assertion and maintenance 
of this bond of right, however burdensome. ‘The first neces- 
sity of all economical government is to secure the unques- 
tioned and unquestionable working of the great law of Prop- 
erty—that aman who works for a thing shall be allowed to get 
it, keep it, and consume it, in peace ; and that he who does 
not eat his cake to-day, shall be seen, without grudging, to 
have his cake to-morrow. This, I say, is the first point to be 
secured by social law ; without this, no political advance, nay, 
no political existence, is in any sort possible. "Whatever evil, 
luxury, iniquity, may seem to result from it, this is neverthe- 
less the first of all Equities ; and to the enforcement of this, 
by law and by police-truncheon, the nation must always pri- 
marily set its mind—that the cupboard door may have a firm 
lock to it, and no man’s dinner be carried off by the mob, on 
its way home from the baker’s. Which, thus fearlessly assert- 
ing, we shall endeavour in next paper to consider how far it 
may be practicable for the mob itself, also, in due breadth of 
dish, to have dinners to carry home. 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 15] 


CHAPTER I. 
COIN-KEEPING. 


68. Iv will be seen by reference to the last chapter that our 
present task is to examine the relation of holders of store to 
holders of currency ; and of both to those who hold neither. 
In order to do this, we must determine on which side we are 
to place substances such as gold, commonly known as bases 
of currency. By aid of previous definitions the reader will 
now be able to understand closer statements than have yet 
been possible. 

69. The currency of any country consists of every document 
acknowledging debt, which is transferable in the country.* 

This transferableness depends upon its intelligibility and 
credit. Its intelligibility depends chiefly on the difficulty of 
forging anything like it ;—its credit much on national char- 
acter, but ultimately always on the existence of substantial means 
of meeting its demand.+ 

As the degrees of transferableness are variable, (some docu- 
ments passing only in certain places, and others passing, if at 
all, for less than their inscribed value), both the mass, and, so 
to speak, fluidity, of the currency, are variable. True or per- 
fect currency flows freely, like a pure stream ; it becomes 
sluggish or stagnant in proportion to the quantity of less 


[* Remember this definition: it is of great importance as opposed to 
the imperfect ones usually given. When first these essays were pub- 
lished, I remember one of their reviewers asking contemptuously, ‘‘ Is 
half-a-crown a document ?’’ it never having before occurred to him that 
a document might be stamped as well as written, and stamped on silver 
as well as on parchment. | 

[+ I do not mean the demand of the holder of a five-pound note for 
five pounds, but the demand of the holder of a pound for a pound’s 
worth of something good. | 


152 : MUNERA PULVERIS. 


transferable matter which mixes with it, adding to its bulk, 
but diminishing its purity. [Articles of commercial value, on 
which bills are drawn, increase the currency indefinitely ; and 
substances of intrinsic value if stamped or signed without 
restriction so as to become acknowledgments of debt, increase 
it indefinitely also.] Every bit of gold found in Australia, so 
long as it remains uncoined, is an article offered for sale like 
any other ; but-as soon as it is coined into pounds, it dimin- 
ishes the value of every pound we have now in our pockets. 

70. Legally authorized or national currency, in its perfect 
condition, is a form of public acknowledgment of debt, so reg- 
ulated and‘ divided that any person presenting a commodity 
of tried worth in the public market, shall, if he please, receive 
in exchange for it a document giving him claim to the return 
of its equivalent, (1) in any place, (2) at any time, and (3) in 
any kind. 

When currency is quite healthy and vital, the persons en- 
trusted with its management are always able to give on de- 
mand either, 

A. The assigning document for the assigned quantity of 
goods. Or, 

B. The assigned quantity of goods for the assigning docu- 
ment. 

If they cannot give document for goods, the national ex- 
change is at fault. 

If they cannot give goods for document, the national credit 
is at fault. 

The nature and power of the document are therefore to be 
examined under the three relations it bears to Place, Time, 
and Kind. 

71. (1.) It gives claim to the return of equivalent wealth in 
any Place. Its use in this function is to save carriage, so that 
parting with a bushel. of corn in London, we may receive an 
order for a bushel of corn at the Antipodes, or elsewhere. 
To be perfect in this use, the substance of currency must be 
to the maximum portable, credible, and intelligible. Its non- 
acceptance or discredit results always from some form of 
ignorance or dishonour; so far as such interruptions rise out 


MUNERA PULVERIS, 153 


of differences in denomination, there is no ground for their 
continuance among civilized nations. It may be convenient 
in one country to use chiefly copper for coinage, in another 
silver, and in another gold,—reckoning accordingly in cen- 
times, frances, or zecchins: but that a frane should be dif- 
ferent in weight and value from a shilling, and a zwanziger 
vary from both, is wanton loss of commercial power. 

72. (2.) It gives claim to the return of equivalent wealth at 
any Time. In this second use, currency is the exponent of 
accumulation : it renders the laying-up of store at the com- 
mand of individuals unlimitedly possible ;—whereas, but for 
its intervention, all gathering would be confined within cer- 
tain limits by the bulk of property, or by its decay, or the 
difficulty of its guardianship. ‘I will pull down my barns 
and build greater,” cannot be a daily saying ; and all material 
investment is enlargement of care. The national currency 
transfers the guardianship of the store to many ; and preserves 
to the original producer the right of re-entering on its posses- 
sion at any future period. 

73. (3.) It gives claim (practical, though not legal) to the 
return of equivalent wealth in any Aind. It is a transferable 
right, not merely to this or that, but to anything; and its 
power in this function is proportioned to the range of choice. 
If you give a child an apple or a toy, you give him a deter- 
minate pleasure, but if you give him a penny, an indeterminate 
one, proportioned to the range of selection offered by the 
shops in the village. The power of the world’s currency is 
similarly in proportion to the openness of the world’s fair, and, 
commonly, enhanced by the brillancy of external aspect, 
rather than solidity of its wares. 

74. We have said that the currency consists of orders for 
equivalent goods. If equivalent, their quality must be guar- 
anteed. The kinds of goods chosen for specific claim must, 
therefore, be capable of test, while, also, that a store may be 
kept in hand to meet the call of the currency, smallness of 
bulk, with great relative value, is desirable ; and indestructi- 
bility, over at least a certain period, essential. 

Such indestructibility, and facility of being tested, are 


154 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


united in gold; its intrinsic value is great, and its imaginary 
value greater; so that, partly through indolence, partly 
through necessity and want of organization, most nations 
have agreed to take gold for the only basis of their curren- 
cies ;—with this grave disadvantage, that its portability en- 
abling the metal to become an active part of the medium of 
exchenge, the stream of the currency itself becomes opaque 
with gold—half-currency and half commodity, in unison of 
functions which partly neutralize, partly enhance each other’s 
force. 

75. They partly neutralize, since in so far as the gold is 
commodity, it is bad ourrency, because liable to sale ; and in 
so far as it is currency, it is bad commodity, because its ex- 
change value interferes with its practical use. Especially its 
employment in the higher branches of the arts becomes un< 
safe on account of its lability to be melted down for exchange, 

Again. They partly enhance, since in so far as the gold 
has acknowledged intrinsic value, it is good currency, be- 
cause everywhere acceptable ; and in so far as it has legal 
exchangeable value, its worth as a commodity is increased. 
We want no gold in the form of dust or crystal; but we seek 
for it coined, because in that form it will pay baker and 
butcher. And this worth in exchange not only absorbs a 
large quantity in that use,* but greatly increases the effect 


* {Read and think over, the following note very carefully. ] 

The waste of labour in obtaining the gold, though it cannot be 
estimated by help of any existing data, may be understood in its 
bearing on entire economy by supposing it limited to transactions 
between two persons. If two farmers in Australia have been ex- 
changing corn and cattle with each other for years, keeping theiy 
accounts of reciprocal debt in any simple way, the sum of the posses- 
sions of either would not be diminished, though the part of it which 
was lent or borrowed were only reckoned by marks on a stone, or 
notches on a tree ; and the one counted himself accordingly, so many 
scratches, or so many notches, better than the other. But it would 
soon be seriously diminished if, discovering gold in their fields, each 
resolved only to accept golden counters for a reckoning; and accord- 
ingly, whenever he wanted a sack of corn or a cow, was obliged to go 
and wash sand for a week before he could get the means of giving a 
receipt for them, : 


MUNELA PULVERIS. 155 


on the imagination of the quantity used in the arts. Thus, 
in brief, the force of the functions is increased, but their 
precision blunted, by their unison. 

76. These inconveniences, however, attach to gold as a 
basis of currency on account of its portability and precious- 
ness. But afar greater inconvenience attaches to it as the 
only legal basis of currency. Imagine gold to be only attain- 
able in masses weighing several pounds each, and its value, 
like that of malachite or marble, proportioned to its large- 
ness of bulk ;—it could not then get itself confused with the 
currency in daily use, but it might still remain as its basis ; 
and this second inconvenience would still affect it, namely, 
that its significance as an expression of debt varies, as that 
of every other article would, with the popular estimate of its 
desirableness, and with the quantity offered in the market. 
My power of obtaining other goods for gold depends always 
on the strength of public passion for gold, and on the limita- 
tion of its quantity, so that when either of two things happen 
—that the world esteems gold less, or finds it more easily— 
my right of claim is in that degree effaced ; and it has been 
even gravely maintained that a discovery of a mountain of 
gold would cancel the National Debt; in other words, that 
men may be paid for what costs much in what costs nothing. 
Now, it is true that there is little chance of sudden convul- 
sion in this respect ; the world will not so rapidly increase in 
wisdom as to despise gold ona sudden; and perhaps may 
[for a little time] desire it more eagerly the more easily it is 
obtained ; nevertheless, the right of debt ought not to rest 
on a basis of imagination ; nor should the frame of a national 
currency vibrate with every miser’s panic, and every merchant’s 
imprudence. 

77. There are two methods of avoiding this insecurity, 
which would have been fallen upon long ago, if, instead of 
calculating the conditions of the supply of gold, men had 
only considered how the world might live and manage its 
affairs without gold at all.* One is, to base the currency on 


*Tt is difficult to estimate the curious futility of discussions such as 
that which lately occupied a section of the British Association, on the 


156 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


substances of truer intrinsic value’; the other, to base it on 
several substances instead of one. If I can only claim gold, 
the discovery of a golden mountain starves me; but if I can 
claim bread, the discovery of a continent of corn-fields need 
not trouble me. If, however, I wish to exchange my bread 
for other things, a good harvest will for the time limit my 
power in this respect ; but if I can claim either bread, iron, 
or silk at pleasure, the standard of value has three feet instead 
of one, and will be proportionately firm. Thus, ultimately, 
the steadiness of currency depends upon the breadth of its 
base ; but the difficulty of organization increasing with this 
breadth, the discovery of the condition at once safest and 
most convenient* can only be by long analysis, which must 
for the present be deferred. Gold or silver + may always be 
retained in limited use, as a luxury of coinage and question- 
less standard, of one weight and alloy among all nations, vary- 
ing only in the die. The purity of coinage, when metallic, is 
closely indicative of the honesty of the system of revenue, and 
even of the general dignity of the State. 


absorption of gold, while no one can produce even the simplest of the 
data necessary for the inquiry. To take the first occurring one,—What 
means have we of ascertaining the weight of gold employed this year in 
the toilettes of the women of Europe (not to speak of Asia); and, sup- 
posing it known, what means of conjecturing the weight by which, next 
year, their fancies, and the changes of style among their jewellers, will 
diminish or increase it ? 

* See, in Pope’s epistle to Lord Bathurst, his sketch of the difficul- 
ties and uses of a currency literally ‘‘ pecuniary ’—(consisting of herds 
of cattle). 


‘¢ His Grace will game—to White's a bull be led,” &e. 


{+ Perhaps both; perhaps silver only. It may be found expedient 
ultimately to leave gold free for use in the arts. As a means of reck- 
oning, the standard might be, and in some cases has already been, 
entirely ideal.—See Mill’s Political Heonomy, book iii. chap. Vii. at 
beginning. 

¢ The purity of the drachma and zecchin were not without signif- 
cance of the state of intellect, art, and policy, both in Athens and Ven 
ice ;—a fact first impressed upon me ten years ago, when, in taking 
daguerreotypes at Venice, I found no purchaseable gold pure enough te 
gild them with, except that of the old Venetian zecchin. 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 157 


78. Whatever the article or articles may be which the national 
currency promises to pay, a premium on that article indicates 
bankruptcy of the government in that proportion, the division 
of its assets being restrained only by the remaining confidence 
of the holders of notes in the return of prosperity to the firm. 
Currencies of forced acceptance, or of unlimited issue, are 
merely various modes of disguising taxation, and delaying 
its pressure, until it is too late to interfere with the cause of 
pressure. To do away with the possibility of such disguise 
would have been among the first results of a true economical 
science, had any such existed ; but there have been too many 
motives for the concealment, so long as it could by any arti- 
fices be maintained, to permit hitherto even the founding of 
such a science. 

79. And indeed, it is only through evil conduct, wilfully 
persisted in, that there is any embarrassment, either in the 
theory or working of currency.. No exchequer is ever em- 
barrassed, nor is any financial question difficult of solution, 
when people keep their practice honest, and their heads cool. 
But when governments lose all office of pilotage, protection, 
or scrutiny ; and live only in magnificence of authorized lar- 
ceny, and polished mendicity ; or when the people, choosing 
Speculation (the s usually redundant in the spelling) instead 
of Toil, visit no dishonesty with chastisement, that each may 
with impunity take his dishonest turn ;—there are no tricks 
of financial terminology that will save them; all signature 
and mintage do but magnify the ruin they retard ; and even 
the riches that remain, stagnant or current, change only from 
the slime of Avernus to the sand of Phlegethon—quicksand 
at the embouchure ;—land fluently recommended by recent 
auctioneers as “ eligible for building leases.” 

80. Finally, then, the power of true currency is fourfold. 

(1.) Credit power. Its worth in exchange, dependent on 
public opinion of the stability and honesty of the issuer. 

(2.) Real worth. Supposing the gold, or whatever else the 
currency expressly promises, to be required from the issuer, 
for all his notes; and that the call cannot be met in full. 
Then the actual worth of the document would be, and its act- 


158 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


ual worth at any moment is, therefore to be defined as, what 
the division of the assets of the issuer would produce for it. 

(3.) The exchange power of its base. Granting that we 
can get five pounds in gold for our note, it remains a ques- 
tion how much of other things we can get for five pounds in 
gold. The more of other ney exist, and the less gold, the 
greater this power. 

(4.) The power over labour, exercised by the given quantity 
of the base, or of the things to be got for it. The question 
in this case is, how much work, and (question of questions !) 
whose work, is to be had for the food which five pounds will 
buy. This depends on the number of the population, on their 
eifts, and on their dispositions, with which, down to their 
slightest humours, and up to their strongest impulses, the 
power of the currency varies. 

81. Such being the main conditions of national currency, 
we proceed to examine those of the total currency, under the 
broad definition, ‘‘transferable acknowledgment of debt ;”* 


* Under which term, observe, we include all documents of debt, 
which, being honest, might be transferable, though they practically are 
not transferred ; while we exclude all documents which are in reality 
worthless, though in fact transferred temporarily, as bad money is, 
The document of honest debt, not transferred, is merely to paper cur- 
rency as gold withdrawn from circulation is to that of bullion. Much 
confusion has crept into the reasoning on this subject from the idea that 
the withdrawal from circulation is a definable state, whereas it is a 
graduated state, and indefinable. The sovereign in my pocket is with- 
drawn from circulation as long as I choose to keep it there. It is no 
otherwise withdrawn if I bury it, nor even if I choose to make it, and 
others, into a golden cup, and drink out of them; since a rise in the 
price of the wine, or of other things, may at any time cause me to melt 
the cup and throw it back into currency; and the bullion operates on 
the prices of the things in the market as directly, though not as forcibly, 
while it is in the form of a cup as it does in the form of a sovereign. 
No calculation can be founded on my humour in either case. If I like 
to handle rouleaus, and therefore keep a quantity of gold, to play with, 
in the form of jointed basaltic columns, it is all one in its effect on the 
market as if I kept it in the form of twisted filigree, or, steadily ‘‘ ami- 
cus lamne,” beat the narrow gold pieces into broad ones, and dined off 
them. The probability is greater that I break the rouleau than that I 
melt the plate; but the increased probability is not calculable. Thus. 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 159 


among the many forms of which there are in effect only two, 
distinctly opposed ; namely, the acknowledgments of debts 
which will be paid, and of debts which will not. Documents, 
whether in whole or part, of bad debt, being to those of 
good debt as bad money to bullion, we put for the present 
these forms of imposture aside (as in analysing a metal we 
should wash it clear of dross), and then range, in thetr exact 
quantities, the true currency of the country on one side, and 
the store or property of the country on the other. We place 
gold, and all such substances, on the side of documents, as 
far as they operate by signature ;—on the side of store as far 
as they operate by value. ‘Then the currency represents the 
quantity of debt in the country, and the store the quantity 
of its possession. The ownership of all the property is divided 
between the holders of currency and holders of store, and 
whatever the claiming value of the currency is at any moment, 
that value is to be deducted from the riches of the store- 
holders. 

82. Farther, as true currency represents by definition debts 
which will be paid, it represents either the debtor’s wealth, 
or his ability and willingness ; that is to say, either wealth ex- 
isting in his hands transferred to him by the creditor, or 
wealth which, as he is at some time surely to return it, he is 
either increasing, or, if diminishing, has the will and strength 
to reproduce. A sound currency therefore, as by its increase 
it represents enlarging debt, represents also enlarging means ; 
but in this curious way, that a certain quantity of it marks 
the deficiency of the wealth of the country from what it would 
have been if that currency had not existed.* In this respect 


‘ décuments are only withdrawn from the currency when cancelled, and 
bullion when it is so effectually lost as that the probability of finding it 
is no greater than of finding new gold in the mine. 

* For example, suppose an active peasant, having got his ground into 
good order and built himself a comfortable house, finding time still on 
his hands, sees one of his neighbours little able to work, and ill-lodged, 
and oifers to build him also a house, and to put his land in order, on 
condition of receiving for a given period rent for the building and tithe 
of the fruits The offeris accepted, and a document given promissory 
of rent and tithe. This note is money. It can only be good money if 


160 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


it is like the detritus of a mountain ; assume that it lies at a 
fixed angle, and the more the detritus, the larger must be the 
mountain ; but it would have been larger still, had there been 
none. 

83. Farther, though, as above stated, every man possessing 
money has usually also some property beyond what is neces- 
sary for his immediate wants, and men possessing property 
usually also hold currency beyond what is necessary for their 
immediate exchanges, it mainly determines the class to which 
they belong, whether in their eyes the money is an adjunct of 
the property, or the property of the money. In the first case 
the holder’s pleasure is in his possessions, and in his money 
subordinately, as the means of bettering or adding to them. 
In the second, his pleasure is in his money, and in his posses- 
sions only as representing it. (In the first case the money is 
as an atmosphere surrounding the wealth, rising from it and 
raining back upon it; but in the second, it is as a deluge, 
with the wealth floating, and for the most part perishing in 
it.*) The shortest distinction between the men is that the one 
wishes always to buy, and the other to sell. 

84. Such being the great relations of the classes, their sev- 
eral characters are of the highest importance to the nation ; 
for on the character of the store-holders chiefly depend the 
preservation, display, and serviceableness of its wealth ; on 
that of the currency-holders, its distribution ; on that of both, 
its reproduction. 

We shall, therefore, ultimately find it to be of incomparably 
greater importance to the nation in whose hands the thing is 


the man who has incurred the debt so far recovers his strength as to be 
able to take advantage of the help he has received, and meet the de- 
mand of the note; if he lets his house fall to ruin, and his field to 
waste, his promissory note will soon be valueless: but the existence of 
the note at all is a consequence of his not having worked so stoutly as 
the other. Let him gain as much as to be able to pay back the entire 
debt ; the note is cancelled, and we have two rich store-holders and no 
currency. 

[* You need not trouble yourself to make out the sentence in paren- 
thesis, unless you like, but do not think it is mere metaphor. It states 
a fact which I could not have stated so shortly, but by metaphor. ] 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 161 


put, than how much of it is got ; and that the character of the 
holders may be conjectured by the quality of the store ; for 
such and such a man always asks for such and such a thing ; 
nor only asks for it, but if it can be bettered, betters it: so 
that possession and possessor reciprocally act on each other, 
through the entire sum of national possession. The base na- 
tion, asking for base things, sinks daily to deeper vileness of 
nature and weakness in use; while the noble nation, asking 
for noble things, rises daily into diviner eminence in both ; 
the tendency to degradation being surely marked by “ dragia ;” 
that is to say, (expanding the Greek thought), by carelessness 
as to the hands in which things are put, consequent dispute 
for the acquisition of them, disorderliness in the accumulation 
of them, inaccuracy in the estimate of them, and bluntness in 
conception as to the entire nature of possession. 

85. The currrency-holders always increase In number and 
influence in proportion to the bluntness of nature and clumsi- 
ness of the store-holders ; for the less use people can make of 
things, the more they want of them, and the sooner weary of 
them, and want to change them for something else ; and all 
frequency of change increases the quantity and power of cur- 
rency. ‘The large currency-holder himself is essentially a per- 
son who never has been able to make up his mind as to what 
he will have, and proceeds, therefore, in vague collection and 
ageregation, with more and more infuriate passion, urged by 
complacency in progress, vacancy in idea, and pride of con- 
quést. 

While, however, there is this obscurity in the nature of 
possession of currency, there is a charm in the seclusion of it, 
which is to some people very enticing. In the enjoyment of 
real property, others must partly share. The groom has 
some enjoyment of the stud, and the gardener of the garden ; 
but the money is, or seems, shut up; it is wholly enviable. 
No one else can have part in any complacencies arising from 
it. 

The power of ‘arithmetical comparison is also a great thing 
to unimaginative people. They know always they are so much 
better than they were, in money ; so much better than ot/-ars, 


162 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


in money; but wit cannot be so compared, nor character. 
My neighbour cannot be convinced that I am wiser than he 
is, but he can, that Iam worth so much more ; and the uni- 
versality of the conviction is no less flattering than its clear- 
ness. Only a few can understand,—none measure—and few 
will willingly adore, superiorities in other things ; but every- 
body can understand money, everybody can count it, and 
most will worship it. 

86. Now, these various temptations to accumulation would 
be politically harmless if what was vainly accumulated had any 
fair chance of being wisely spent. For as accumulation can- 
not go on for ever, but must some day end in its reverse—if 
this reverse were indeed a beneficial distribution and use, as 
irrigation from reservoir, the fever of gathering, though peril- 
ous to the gatherer, might be serviceable to the community. 
But it constantly happens (so constantly, that it may be stated 
as a political law having few exceptions), that what is unreas- 
onably gathered is also unreasonably spent by the persons into 
whose hands it finally falls. Very frequently it is spent in 
war, or else in a stupefying luxury, twice hurtful, both in be- 
ing indulged by the rich and witnessed by the poor. So that 
the mal tener and mal dare are as correlative as complementary 
colours; and the circulation of wealth, which ought to be 
soft, steady, strong, far-sweeping, and full of warmth, like the 
Gulf stream, being narrowed into an eddy, and concentrated - 
on a point, changes into the alternate suction and surrender 
of Charybdis. Which is indeed, I doubt not, the true mean- 
ing of that marvellous fable, ‘‘ infinite,” as Bacon said of it, 
“in matter of meditation.” * 

87. It is a strange habit of wise humanity to speak in enig- 
mas only, so that the highest truths and usefullest laws must 
be hunted for through whole picture-galleries of dreams, 
which to the vulgar seem dreams only. Thus Homer, the 
Greek tragedians, Plato, Dante, Chaucer, Shakspeare, and 
Goethe, have hidden all that is chiefly serviceable in their 

[* What follows, to the end of the chapter, was a note only, in the 


first printing ; but for after service, it is of more value than any other 
part of the book, so I have put it into the main text. ] 


MUNERA PUL VERIS, 163 


work, and in all the various literature they absorbed and re- 
embodied, under types which have rendered it quite useless to 
the multitude. What is worse, the two primal declarers of 
moral discovery, Homer and Plato, are partly at issue ; for 
Plato’s logical power quenched his imagination, and he be; 
came incapable of understanding the purely imaginative ele- 
ment either in poetry or painting: he therefore somewhat 
overrates the pure discipline of passionate art in song and 
music, and misses that of meditative art. There is, however, 
a deeper reason for his distrust of Homer. His love of justice, 
and reverently religious nature, made him dread, as death, 
every form of fallacy; but chiefly, fallacy respecting the 
world to come (his own myths being only symbolic exponents 
of a rational hope). We shall perhaps now every day dis- 
cover more clearly how right Plato was in this, and feel our- 
selves more and more wonderstruck that men such as Homer 
and Dante (and, in an inferior sphere, Milton), not to speak 
of the great sculptors and painters of every age, have permit- 
ted themselves, though full of all nobleness and wisdom, to 
coin idle imaginations of the mysteries of eternity, and guide 
the faiths of the families of the earth by the courses of their 
own vague and visionary arts: while the indisputable truths 
of human life and duty, respecting which they all have but 
one voice, lie hidden behind these veils of phantasy, unsought, 
and often unsuspected. I will gather carefully, out of Dante 
and Homer, what, in this kind, bears on our subject, in its 
due place ; the first broad intention of their symbols may be 
sketched at once. 

88. The rewards of a worthy use of riches, subordinate to 
other ends, are shown by Dante in the fifth and sixth orbs of 
Paradise ; for the punishment of their unworthy use, three 
places are assigned; one for the avaricious and prodigal 
whose souls are lost, (fell, canto 7); one for the avaricious 
and prodigal whose souls are capable of purification, (Purga- 
tory, canto 19) ; and one for the usurers, of whom none can 
be redeemed (fell, canto 17). The first group, the largest in 
all hell (‘gente piu che altrove troppa,” compare Virgil's 
quae maxima turba”), meet in contrary currents, as the 


164 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


waves of Charybdis, casting weights at each other from oppo. 
site sides. ‘This weariness of contention is the chief element 
of their torture ; so marked by the beautiful lines beginning 
“Or puoi, figliuol,” &.: (but the usurers, who made their 
money inactively, sit on the sand, equally without rest, how: 
ever. “ Di qua, di la, soccorrien, &c.) For it is not avarice, 
but contention for riches, leading to this double misuse of 
them, which, in Dante’s light, is the unredeemable sin. The 
place of its punishment is guarded by Plutus, “the great 
enemy,” and “la fiéra crudele,” a spirit quite different from 
the Greek Plutus, who, though old and blind, is not cruel, 
and is curable, so as to become far-sighted. (ob tuddds GAN’ 
6g BAérwv.—Plato’s epithets in first book of the Laws.) Still 
more does this Dantesque type differ from the resplendent 
Plutus of Goethe in the second part of Faust, who is the per- 
sonified power of wealth for good or evil—not the passion for 
wealth ; and again from the Plutus of Spenser, who is the 
passion of mere aggregation. Dante’s Plutus is specially and 
definitely the Spirit of Contention and Competition, or Evil 
Commerce ; because, as I showed before, this kind of com- 
merce “‘makes all men strangers ;” his speech is therefore 
unintelligible, and no single soul of all those ruined by him 
has recognizable features. 

On the other hand, the redeemable sins of avarice and 
prodigality are, in Dante’s sight, those which are without de- 
liberate or calculated operation. The lust, or lavishness, of 
riches can be purged, so long as there has been no servile 
consistency of dispute and competition for them. The sin is 
spoken of as that of degradation by the love of earth ; it is 
purified by deeper humiliation—the souls crawl on their bel- 
lies; their chant is, “‘my soul cleaveth unto the dust.” But 
the spirits thus condemned are all recognizable, and even the 
worst examples of the thirst for gold, which they are com- 
pelled to tell the histories of during the night, are of men 
swept by the passion of avarice into violent crime, but not 
sold to its steady work. 

89. The precept given to each of these spirits for its de- 
liverance is—Turn thine eyes to the lucre (lure) which the ° 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 165 


Kiternal King rolls with the mighty wheels. Otherwise, the 
wheels of the “Greater Fortune,” of which the constellation 
is ascending when Dante’s dream begins. Compare George 


Herbert— 
‘* Lift up thy head ; 
Take stars for money ; stars, not to be told 
By any art, yet to be purchased.” 


And Plato’s notable sentence in the third book of the Polity. 
—“ Tell them they have divine gold and silver in their souls 
for ever ; that they need no money stamped of men—neither 
may they otherwise than impiously mingle the gathering of 
the divine with the mortal treasure, for through that which the 
law of the multitude has coined, endless crimes have been done 
and suffered ; but in their’s is neither pollution nor sorrow.” 

90. At the entrance of this place of punishment an evil 
spirit is seen by Dante, quite other than the ‘‘ Gran Nemico.” 
The great enemy is obeyed knowingly and willingly ; but this 
spirit—feminine—and called a Siren—is the “ Deceitfulness of 
riches,” dmdry tAovTov of the Gospels, winning obedience by 
guile. This is the Idol of riches, made doubly phantasmal by 
Dante’s seeing her in adream. She is lovely to look upon, 
and enchants by her sweet singing, but her womb is loath- 
some. Now, Dante does not call her one of the Sirens care- 
lessly, any more than he speaks of Charybdis carelessly ; 
and though he had got at the meaning of the Homeric fable 
only through Virgil’s obscure tradition of it, the clue he has 
given usis quite enough. Bacon’s interpretation, “the Sirens, 
or pleasures,” which has become universal since his time, is 
opposed alike to Plato’s meaning and Homer’s. The Sirens 
are not pleasures, but Desires: in the Odyssey they are the 
phantoms of vain desire ; but in Plato’s Vision of Destiny, phan- 
toms of divine desire; singing each a different note on the 
circles of the distaff of Necessity, but forming one harmony, 
to which the three great Fates put words. Dante, however, 
adopted the Homeric conception of them, which was that 
they were demons of the Imagination, not carnal; (desire of 
the eyes ; notlustof the flesh) ; therefore said to be daughters 
of the Muses. Yet not of the Muses, heavenly or historical 


166 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


but of the Muse of pleasure; and they are at first winged, 
because even vain hope excites and helps when first formed ; 
but afterwards, contending for the possession of the imagi- 
nation with the Muses themselves, they are deprived of their 
wings. 

91. And thus we are to distinguish the Siren power from 
the power of Circe, who is no daughter of the Muses, but of 
the strong elements, Sun and Sea; her power is that of frank, 
and full vital pleasure, which, if governed and watched, 
nourishes men ; but, unwatched, and having no “ moly,” bit- 
terness or delay, mixed with it, turns men into beasts, but 
does not slay them,—leaves them, on the contrary, power of 
revival. She is herself indeed an Enchantress ;—pure Animal 
life ; transforming—or degrading—but always wonderful (she 
puts the stores on board the ship invisibly, and is gone again, 
like a ghost) ; even the wild beasts rejoice and are softened 
around her cave ; the transforming poisons she gives to men 
are mixed with no rich feast, but with pure and right nour- 
ishment,—Pramnian wine, cheese, and flour; that is, wine, 
milk, and corn, the three great sustainers of life—it is their 
own fault if these make swine of them; (see Appendix V.) 
and swine are chosen merely as the type of consumption ; as 
Plato’s téy woAts, in the second book of the Polity, and per- 
haps chosen by Homer with a deeper knowledge of the like- 
ness in variety of nourishment, and internal form of body. 

“Et quel est, sil vous plait, cet audacieux animal qui se 
permet d’étre biti au dedans comme une jolie petite fille ?” 

“ Hélas! chere enfant, j'ai honte de le nommer, et il ne 
faudra pas m’en vouloir. C’est... cest le cochon. Ce 
nest pas précis¢ment flatteur pour vous; mais nous en 
sommes tous la, et si cela vous contrarie par trop, il faut aller 
yous plaindre au bon Dieu qui a voulu que les choses fussent 
arrangées ainsi: seulement le cochon, qui ne pense qu’a man- 
ger, a lestomac bien plus vaste que nous et c’est toujours une 
consolation.” —(LHistoire @une Bouchée de Pain, Lettre 1x.) 

92. But the deadly Sirens are in all things opposed to the 
Circean power. They promise pleasure, but never give it. 
They nourish in no wise; but slay by slow death. And 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 167 


whereas they corrupt the heart and the head, instead of 
merely betraying the senses, there is no recovery from their 
power ; they do not tear nor scratch, like Scylla, but the men 
who have listened to them are poisoned, and waste away. 
Note that the Sirens’ field is covered, not merely with the 
bones, but with the skins, of those who have been consumed 
there. They address themselves, in the part of the song 
which Homer gives, not to the passions of Ulysses, but to his 
vanity, and the only man who ever came within hearing of 
them, and escaped untempted, was Orpheus, who silenced the 
vain imaginations by singing the praises of the gods. 

93. It is, then, one of these Sirens whom Dante takes as 
the phantasm or deceitfulness of riches ; but note further, 
that she says it was her song that deceived Ulysses. Look 
back to Dante’s account of Ulysses’ death, and we find it was 
not the love of money, but pride of knowledge, that betrayed 
him ; whence we get the clue to Dante’s complete meaning: 
that the souls whose love of wealth is pardonable have been 
first deceived into pursuit of it by a dream of its higher uses, 
or by ambition. His Siren is therefore the Philotimé of 
Spenser, daughter of Mammon— 


*¢ Whom all that folk with such contention 
Do flock about, my deare, my daughter is— 
Honour and dignitie from her alone 
Derived are.” 


By comparing Spenser’s entire account of this Philotimé 
with Dante’s of the Wealth-Siren, we shall get at the full 
meaning of both poets ; but that of Homer les hidden much 
more deeply. For his Sirens are indefinite ; and they are dee 
sires of any evil thing ; power of wealth is not specially indi- 
cated by him, until, escaping the harmonious danger of im- 
azination, Ulysses has to choose between two practical ways 
of life, indicated by the two rocks of Scylla and Charybdis. 
The monsters that haunt them are quite distinct from the 
rocks themselves, which, having many other subordinate sig- 
nifications, are in the main Labour and Idleness, or getting 
and spending; each with its attendant monster, or betraying 


168 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


demon. Therock of gaining has its summit in the clouds, in 
visible, and not to be climbed ; that of spending is Jow, but 
marked by the cursed fig-tree, which has leaves, but no fruit. 
We know the type elsewhere; and there is a curious lateral 
allusion to it by Dante when Jacopo di Sant’ Andrea, who had 
ruined himself by profusion and committed suicide, scatters 
the leaves of the bush of Lotto degli Agli, endeavouring te 
hide himself among them. We shall hereafter examine the 
type completely ; here I will only give an approximate ren- 
dering of Homer’s words, which have been obscured more by 
translation than even by tradition. 

94. “They are overhanging rocks. The great waves of 
blue water break round them ; and the blessed Gods call them 
the Wanderers. 

‘“‘ By one of them no winged thing can pass—not even the 
wild doves that bring ambrosia to their father Jove—but the 
smooth rock seizes its sacrifice of them.” (Not even ambrosia 
to be had without Labour. The word is peculiar—as a part 
of anything is offered for sacrifice ; especially used of heave- 
offering.) ‘ It reaches the wide heaven with its top, and a 
dark blue cloud rests on it, and never passes; neither does 
the clear sky hold it, in summer nor in harvest. Nor can 
any man climb it—notif he had twenty feet and hands, for 
it is smooth as though it were hewn. 

“And in the midst of it is a cave which is turned the way 
of hell. And therein dwells Scylla, whining for prey: her 
cry, indeed, is no louder than that of a newly-born whelp : 
but she herself is an awful thing—nor can any creature see 
her face and be glad; no, though it were a god that rose 
against her. For she has twelve feet, all fore-feet, and six 
reals. and terrible heads on them ; and each has three rows 
of teeth, full of black death. 

“But the opposite rock is lower than this, though but a 
bow-shot distant ; and upon it there is a great fig-tree, full of 
leaves ; and under it the terrible Charybdis sucks down the 
black water. Thrice in the day she sucks it down, and thrice 
casts it up again : be not thou there when she sucks down, for 
Neptune himself could not save thee.” 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 169 


[Thus far went my rambling note, in Fraser's Magazime. 
The Editor sent me a compliment on it—of which I was very 
proud ; what the Publisher thought of it, Iam not informed ; 
only I know that eventually he stopped the papers. I think 
a great deal of it myself, now, and have put it all in large print 
accordingly, and should like to write more; but will, on the 
contrary, self-denyingly, and in gratitude to any reader whe 
has got through so much, end my chapter. } 


170 MUNERA PULVERIs 


CHAPTER IV. 
COMMERCE, 


95. As the currency conveys right of choice out of many 
things in exchange for one, so Commerce is the agency by 
which the the power of choice is obtained ; so that countries 
producing only timber can obtain for their timber silk and 
gold ; or, naturally producing only jewels and frankincense, 
can obtain for them cattle and corn. In this function, com- 
merce is of more importance to a country in proportion to 
the limitations of its products, and the restlessness of its 
fancy ;—generally of greater importance towards Northern 
latitudes. 

96. Commerce is necessary, however, not only to exchange 
local products, but local skill. Labour requiring the agency 
of fire can only be given abundantly in cold countries ; labour 
requiring suppleness of body and sensitiveness of touch, only 
in warm ones; labour involving accurate vivacity of thought 
only in temperate ones ; while peculiar imaginative actions 
are produced by extremes of heat and cold, and of light and 
darkness. The production of great art is hmited to climates 
warm enough to admit of repose in the open air, and cool 
enough to render such repose delightful. Minor variations in 
modes of skill distinguish every locality. The labour which at 
any place is easiest, 1s in that place cheapest ; and it becomes 
often desirable that products raised in one country should be 
wrought in another. Hence have arisen discussions on “‘ Inter- 
national values ” which will be one day remembered as highly 
curious exercises of the human mind. For it will be discoy- 
ered, in due course of tide and time, that international value is 
regulated just as inter-provincial or inter-parishional value is. 
Coals and hops are exchanged between Northumberland and 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 171 


Kent on absolutely the same principles as iron and wine be- 
tween Lancashire and Spain. The greater breadth of an arm 
of the sea increases the cost, but does not modify the princi- 
ple of exchange ; and a bargain written in two languages will 
haye no other economical results than a bargain written in 
one. The distances of nations are measured, not by seas, 
but by ignorances; and their divisions determined, not by 
dialects, but by enmities.* 

97. Of course, a system of international values may always 
be constructed if we assume a relation of moral law to physi- 
cal geography ; as, for instance, that it is right to cheat or 
rob across a river, though not across a road ; or across a sea, 
though not across a river, &c. ;—again, a system of such values 
may be constructed by assuming similar relations of taxation 
to physical geography ; as, for instance, that an article should 
be taxed in crossing a river, but not in crossing a road ; or 
in being carried fifty miles, but not in being carried five, &c. ; 
such positions are indeed not easily maintained when once put 
in logical form ; but one law of international value is main- 
tainable in any form : namely, that the farther your neighbour 
lives from you, and the less he understands you, the more you 
are bound to be true in your dealings with him ; because your 
power over him is greater in proportion to his ignorance, and 
his remedy more difficult in proportion to his distance. t 

98. I have just said the breadth of sea increases the cost of 
exchange. Now note that exchange, or commerce, in itself, is 
always costly ; the sum of the value of the goods being dimin- 
ished by the cost of their conveyance, and by the maintenance 
of the persons employed in it ; so thatit is only when there is 
advantage to both producers (in getting the one thing for the 


[* I have repeated the substance of this and the next paragraph so 
often since, that Iam ashamed and weary. ‘The thing is too true, and 
too simple, it seems, for anybody ever to believe. Meantime, the theo- 
ries of ‘‘ international values,” as explained by Modern Political Econ- 
omy, have brought about last year’s pillage of France by Germany, and 
the affectionate relations now existing in consequence between the in- 
habitants of the right and left banks of the Rhine. ] 

[+I wish some one would examine and publish accurately the late 
dealings of the Governors of the Cape with the Cafiirs. | 


172 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


other) greater than the loss in conveyance, that the exchange 
is expedient. And it can only be justly conducted when the 
porters kept by the producers (commonly called merchants) 
expect mere pay, and not profit.* For in just commerce there 
are but three parties—the two persons or societies exchang- 
ing, and the agent or agents of exchange; the value of the 
things to be exchanged is known by both the exchangers, and 
each receives equal value, neither gaining nor losing (for what- 
ever one gains the other loses). The intermediate agent is 
paid a known per-centage by both, partly for labour in con- 
veyance, partly for care, knowledge, and risk ; every attempt 
at concealment of the amount of the pay indicates either ef- 
fort on the part of the agent to obtain unjust profit, or effort 
on the part of the exchangers to refuse him just pay. But for 
the most part it is the first, namely, the effort on the part of 
the merchant to obtain larger profit (so-called) by buying 
cheap and selling dear. Some part, indeed, of this larger 
gain is deserved, and might be openly demanded, because it 
is the reward of the merchant’s knowledge, and foresight of 
probable necessity ; but the greater part of such gain is un- 
just ; and unjust in this most fatal way, that it depends, first, 
on keeping the exchangers ignorant of the exchange value of 
the articles ; and, secondly, on taking advantage of the buyer's 
need and the seller’s poverty. It is, therefore, one of the es- 
sential, and quite the most fatal, forms of usury ; for usury 
means merely taking an exorbitant + sum for the use of any- 
thing ; and it is no matter whether the exorbitance is on loan 
or exchange, on rent or on price—the essence of the usury 
being that it is obtained by advantage of opportunity or ne- 
cessity, and not. as due reward for labour. All the great 

[* By ‘‘ pax,” I mean wages for labour or skill; by “ profit,” gain 
dependent on the state of the market. ] 

[+ Since I wrote this, I have worked out the question of interest of 
money, which always, until lately, had embarrassed and defeated me ; 
and I find that the payment of interest of any amount whatever is real 
‘fusury,” and entirely unjustifiable. I was shown this chiefly by the 
pamphlets issued by Mr. W. C. Sillar, though I greatly regret the impa- 


tience which causes Mr. Sillar to regard usury as the radical crime in po 
litical economy. ‘There are others worse, that act with it. | 


MUNELRA PULVERIS. 173 


thinkers, therefore, have held it to be unnatural and impious, 
in so far as it feeds on the distress of others, or their folly.* 
Nevertheless, attempts to repress it by law must for ever be 
ineffective ; though Plato, Bacon, and the First Napoleon—all 
three of them men who knew somewhat more of humanity 
than the “ British merchant” usually does—tried their hands 
at it, and have left some (probably) good moderative forms of 
law, which we will examine in their place, But the only final 
check upon it must be radical purifying of the national char- 
acter, for being, as Bacon calls it, ‘‘ concessum propter duri- 
tiem cordis,” it is to be done away with by touching the heart 
only ; not, however, without medicinal law—as in the case of 
the other permission, ‘‘propter duritiem.” But in this more 
than in anything (though much in all, and though in this he 
would not himself allow of their application, for his own laws 
against usury are sharp enough), Plato’s words in the fourth 
book of the Polity are true, that neither drugs, nor charms, 
nor burnings, will touch a deep-lying political sore, any more 
than a deep bodily one; but only right and utter change of 
constitution: and that ‘they do but lose their labour who 
think that by any tricks of ‘law they can get the better of 
these mischiefs of commerce, and see not that they hew ata 
Hydra.” 

99. And indeed this Hydra seems so unslayable, and sin 
sticks so fast between the joinings of the stones of buying 
and selling, that “to trade” in things, or literally “ cross- 
give ” them, has warped itself, by the instinct of nations, into 
their worst word for fraud ; for, because in trade there cannot 
but be trust, and it seems also that there cannot but also be 
injury in answer to it, what is merely fraud between enemies 
becomes treachery among friends: and “ trader,” ‘ traditor,” 
and “traitor” are but the same word. For which simplicity 
of language there is more reason than at first appears : for 
as in true commerce there is no “profit,” so in true com- 
merce there is no “sale.” The idea of sale is that of an 

* Hence Dante’s companionship of Cahors, Jnf., canto xi., supported 


by the view taken of the matter throughout the middle ages, in common 
with the Greeks. 


174 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


interchange between enemies respectively endeavouring to get 
the better one of another ; but commerce is an exchange be- 
tween friends ; and there is no desire but that it should be 
just, any more than there would be between members of the 
same family.* The moment there is a bargain over the pot- 
tage, the family relation is dissolved :—typically, “ the days of 
mourning for my father are at hand.” Whereupon follows 
the resolve, “ then will I slay my brother.” 

100. This inhumanity of mercenary commerce is the more 
notable because it is a fulfilment of the law that the corrup- 
tion of the best is the worst. For as, taking the body nat- 
ural for symbol of the body politic, the governing and form- 
ing powers may be likened to the brain, and the labouring 
to the limbs, the mercantile, presiding over circulation and 
communication of things in changed utilities, is symbolized 
by the heart; and, if that hardens, all is lost. And this is 
the ultimate lesson which the leader of English intellect meant 
for us, (a lesson, indeed, not all his own, but part of the old 
wisdom of humanity), in the tale of the Merchant of Venice ; 
in which the true and incorrupt merchant,—kind and free be- 
yond every other Shakspearian conception of men,—is opposed 
to the corrupted merchant, or usurer ; the lesson being deep- 
ened by the expression of the strange hatred which the cor- 
rupted merchant bears to the pure one, mixed with intense 
scorn,— 

“This is the fool that lent out money gratis ; look to him, 
jailer,” (as to lunatic no less than criminal) the enmity, ob- 
serve, having its symbolism literally carried out by being 
aimed straight at the heart, and finally foiled by a literal ap- 
peal to the great moral law that flesh and blood cannot be 
weighed, enforced by “ Portia” + (“‘Portion”), the type of di- 


[* I do not wonder when I re-read this, that people talk about my 
‘‘sentiment.”” But there is no sentiment whatever in the matter. It is 
a hard and bare commercial fact, that if two people deal together whe 
don’t try to cheat each other, they will in a given time, make more money 
out of each other than if they do. See § 104. ] 

+ Shakspeare would certainly never have chosen this name had he 
been forced to retain the Roman spelling. Like Perdita, ‘‘ lost lady,’ 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 175 


vine Fortune, found, not in gold, nor in silver, but in lead, 
that is to say, in endurance and patience, not in splendour ; 
and finally taught by her lips also, declaring, instead of the 
law and quality of “ merces,” the greater law and quality of 
mercy, which is not strained, but drops as the rain, blessing 
him that gives and him that takes. And observe that this 
“mercy” is not the mean “Misericordia,” but the mighty 
‘‘ Gratia,” answered by Gratitude, (observe Shylock’s leaning 
on the, to him detestable, word, gratis, and compare the re- 
lations of Grace to Equity given in the second chapter of the 
second book of the Memorabilia ;) that is to say, it 1s the gra- 
cious or loving, instead of the strained, or competing manner, 
of doing things, answered, not only with ‘‘merces” or pay, 
but with “‘ merci” or thanks. And this is indeed the mean- 
ing of the great benediction ‘Grace, mercy, and peace,” for 
there can be no peace without grace, (not even by help of 
rifled cannon), nor even without triplicity of graciousness, for 
the Greeks, who began but with one Grace, had to open their 
scheme into three before they had done. 

101. With the usual tendency of long repeated thought, 
to take the surface for the deep, we have conceived these 
goddesses as if they only gave loveliness to gesture ; whereas 


or Cordelia, ‘‘ heart-lady,” Portia is ‘‘fortune”’ lady. The two great 
relative groups of words, Fortuna, fero, and fors—Portio, porto, and 
pars (with the lateral branch, op-portune, im-portune, opportunity, &c.), 
are of deep and intricate significance ; their various senses of bringing, 
abstracting, and sustaining being all centralized by the wheel (which 
bears and moves at once), or still better, the ball (spera) of Fortune,— 
** Volve sua spera, e beata si gode:” the motive power of this wheel 
distinguishing its goddess from the fixed majesty of Necessitas with her 
iron nails ; or avdyxn, with her pillar of fire and iridescent orbits, fived 
at the centre. Portus and porta, and gate in its connexion with gain, 
form another interesting branch group ; and Mors, the concentration of 
delaying, is always to be remembered with Fors, the concentration of 
bringing and bearing, passing on into Fortis and Fortitude. 

[This note is literally a mere memoranduin for the future work which 
I am now completing in Fors Clavigera ; it was printed partly in vanity, 
but also with real desire to get people to share the interest I found in 
the careful study of the leading words in noble languages. Compare 
the next note. ] 


176 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


their true function is to give graciousness to deed, the other 
loveliness arising naturally out of that. In which function 
Charis becomes Charitas ;* and has a name and praise even 
ereater than that of Faith or Truth, for these may be main- 
tained sullenly and proudly ; but Charis is in her countenance 
always gladdening (Aglaia), and in her service instant and 
humble ; and the true wife of Vulcan, or Labour. And it is 
not until her sincerity of function is lost, and her mere beauty 
contemplated instead of her patience, that she is born again 
of the foam flake, and becomes Aphrodité ; and it is then only 
that she becomes capable of joining herself to war and to the 
enmities of men, instead of to labour and their services. 
Therefore the fable of Mars and Venus is chosen by Homer, 
picturing himself as Demodocus, to sing at the games in the 
court of Alcinous. Pheeacia is the Homeric island of Atlantis ; 
an image of noble and wise government, concealed, (how 
slightly !) merely by the change of a short vowel for a long 


* As Charis becomes Charitas, the word ‘‘ Cher,” or ‘‘ Dear,’’ passes 
from Shylock’s sense of it (to buy cheap and sell dear) into Antonio’s 
sense of it: emphasized with the final 7 in tender ‘‘ Cheri,” and hushed 
to English calmness in our noble ‘‘ Cherish.”” The reader must not think 
that any care can be misspent in tracing the connexion and power of the 
words which we have to use in the sequel. (See Appendix VI.) Much 
education sums itself in making men economize their words, and under- 
stand them. Nor is it possible to estimate the harm which has been 
done, in matters of higher speculation and conduct, by loose verbiage, 
though we may guess at if by observing the dislike which people show 
to having anything about their religion said to them in simple words, be- 
cause then they understand it. Thus congregations meet weekly to in- 
voke the influence of a Spirit of Life and Truth; yet if any part of that 
character were intelligibly expressed to them by the formulas of the 
service, they would be offended. Suppose, for instance, in the closing 
benediction, the clergyman were to give vital significance to the vague 
word ‘‘ Holy,” and were to say, ‘‘ the fellowship of the Helpful and 
Honest Ghost be with you, and remain with you always,” what would 
be the horror of many, first at the irreverence of so intelligible an ex- 
pression; and secondly, at the discomfortable occurrence of the sus- 
picion that while throughout the commercial dealings of the week they 
had denied the propriety of Help, and possibility of Honesty, the Per 
son whose company they had been now asking to be blessed with could 
have no fellowship with cruel people or knaves. 


MUNERA PULVERIS, 177 


one in the name of its queen ; yet misunderstood by all later 
writers, (even by Horace, in his “pinguis, Phzeaxque ”). 
That fable expresses the perpetual error of men in thinking 
that grace and dignity can only be reached by the soldier, and 
never by the artisan ; so that commerce and the useful arts 
have had the honour and beauty taken away, and only the 
Fraud and Pain left to them, with the lucre. Which is, in- 
deed, one great reason of the continual blundering about the 
offices of government with respect to commerce. The higher 
classes are ashamed to employ themselves in it; and though 
ready enough to fight for (or occasionally against) the people, 
—to preach to them,—or judge them, will not break bread for 
them ; the refined upper servant who has willingly looked 
after the burnishing of the armoury and ordering of the 
library, not liking to set foot in the larder. 

102. Farther still. As Charis becomes Charitas on the one 
side, she becomes—better still—Chara, Joy, on the other ; 
or rather this is her very mother’s milk and the beauty of her 
childhood ; for God brings no enduring Love, nor any other 
good, out of pain ; nor out of contention ; but out of joy and 
harmony. And in this sense, human and divine, music and 
gladness, and the measures of both, come into her name ; 
and Cher becomes full-vowelled Cheer, and Cheerful; and 
Chara opens into Choir and Choral.* 

103. And lastly. As Grace passes into Freedom of action, 
Charis becomes Eleutheria, or Liberality ; a form of liberty 
quite curiously and intensely different from the thing usually 


* “74 nev ody BAAa (ou ovK exew alcOnow Tav év Tals KWhoeot Thtews 
ovde arakiav, ois 8H pududs dvoua kal Gomovias juiy 5& obs Et wmomev TOdS 
@eovs (Apollo, the Muses, and Bacchus—the grave Bacchus, that is— 
ruling the choir of age; or Bacchus restraining ; ‘seva tene, cum Bere- 
cyntio cornu, tympana,’ &.) cuyxopevtas 5€5006at, Tovbrous elves 
Kal tovs 5eBdxoTas Thy evpvdudy Te Ka évapudvioy alcOnow we® HSoviis . . . 
xdpovs TE wvouaKévat Tapa Tis xapas EudvTov bvowa.” ‘‘ Other animals 
have no perception of order nor of disorder in motion ; but for us, 
Apollo and Bacchus and the Muses are appcinted to mingle in our 
dances ; and these are they who have given vs the sense of delight in 
rhythm and harmony. And the name of choir, choral dance, (we may 
believe, ) came from chara (delight}.’’—Laws, book ii. 


178 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


understood by “ Liberty” in modern language : indeed, much 
more like what some people would call slavery: for a Greek 
always understood, primarily, by liberty, deliverance from the 
law of his own passions (or from what the Christian writers 
call bondage of corruption), and this a complete liberty : not 
being merely safe from the Siren, but also unbound from the 
mast, and not having to resist the passion, but making it fawn 
upon, and follow him—(this may be again partly the meaning 
of the fawning beasts about the Circean cave; so, again, 
George Herbert— 


Correct thy passion’s spite, 
Then may the beasts draw thee to happy light)— 


And it is only in such generosity that any man becomes 
capable of so governing others as to take true part in any 
system of national economy. Nor is there any other eternal 
distinction between the upper and lower classes than this 
form of liberty, Eleutheria, or benignity, in the one, and its 
opposite of slavery, Douleia, or malignity, in the other; the 
separation of these two orders of men, and the firm govern- 
ment of the lower by the higher, being the first conditions of 
possible wealth and economy in any state,—the Gods giving 
it no greater gift than the power to discern its true freemen, 
and ‘malignum spernere vulgus.” 

104. While I have traced the finer and higher laws of this 
matter for those whom they concern, I have also to note 
the material law—vulgarly expressed in the proverb, ‘“ Hon- 
esty is the best policy.” That proverb is indeed wholly inap- 
plicable to matters of private interest. It is not true that 
honesty, as far as material gain is concerned, profits individ- 
uals. A clever and cruel knayve will in a mixed society al- 
ways be richer than an honest person can be. But Honesty 
is the best ‘“ policy,” if policy mean practice of State. For 
fraud gains nothing in a State. It only enables the knayes in 
it to live at the expense of honest people; while there is for 
every act of fraud, however small, a loss of wealth to the 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 179 


community. Whatever the fraudulent person gains, some 
other person loses, as fraud produces nothing ; and there is, 
besides, the loss of the time and thought spent in accomplish- 
ing the fraud, and of the strength otherwise obtainable by 
mutual help (not to speak of the fevers of anxiety and jealousy 
in the blood, which are a heavy physical loss, as I will show in 
due time). Practically, when the nation is deeply corrupt, 
cheat answers to cheat; every one is in turn imposed upon, 
and there is to the body politic the dead loss of the ingenuity, 
together with the incalculable mischief of the injury to each 
defrauded person, producing collateral effect unexpectedly. 
My neighbour sells me bad meat: I sell him in return flawed 
iron. We neither of us get one atom of pecuniary advantage 
on the whole transaction, but we both suffer unexpected in- 
convenience ; my men get scurvy, and his cattle-truck runs 
off the rails. 

105. The examination of this form of Charis must, there- 
fore, lead us into the discussion of the principles of govern- 
ment in general, and especially of that of the poor by the 
rich, discovering how the Graciousness joined with the Great- 
ness, or Love with Majestas, is the true Dei Gratia, or Divine 
Right, of every form and manner of King ; 1%. e., specifically, 
of the thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, and powers 
of the earth :—of the thrones, stable, or ‘‘ ruling,” literally 
right-doing powers (‘‘rex eris, recte si facies ” ) :—of the dom- 
inations—lordly, edifying, dominant and harmonious powers ; 
chiefly domestic, over the ‘“ built thing,” domus, or house ; 
and inherently twofold, Dominus and Domina; Lord and 
Lady :—of the Princedoms, pre-eminent, incipient, creative, 
and demonstrative powers ; thus poetic and mercantile, in the 
“princeps carmen deduxisse ” and the merchant-prince :—of 
the Virtues or Courages ; militant, guiding, or Ducal powers: 
—and finally of the Strengths, or Forces pure; magistral 
powers, of the More over the less, and the forceful and free 
over the weak and servile elements of life. 

Subject enough for the next paper, involving ‘‘ economical ” 
principles of some importance, of which, for theme, here is a 
sentence, which I do not care to translate, for it would sound 


180 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


harsh in English,* though, truly, it is one of the tenderest 
ever uttered by man ; which may be meditated over, or rather 
through, in the meanwhile, by any one who will take the 
pains :— 


*Ap obv, domep immos TG bvemiothuom pey eyxeipodvts 5€ xphola Cnula 
éxtly, ofrw kat adeApds, Stay Tis VTS wh emicTduevos eyxeip xpHoa, Cnula 
€oTt; 


[* My way now, is to say things plainly, if I can, whether they sound 
harsh or not ;—this is the translation—‘‘Is it possible, then, that as a 
horse is only a mischief to any one who attempts to use him without 
knowing how, so also our brother, if we attempt to use him without 
knowing how, may be a mischief to us ?’’] 


MUNERA PULVERIS, 181 


CHAPTER V. 
GOVERNMENT. 


106. Ir remains for us, as I stated in the close of the last 
chapter, to examine first the principles of government in 
general, and then those of the government of the Poor by 
the Rich. 

The government of a state consists in its customs, laws, 
and councils, and their enforcements. 


J. Customs. 

As one person primarily differs from another by fineness 
of nature, and, secondarily, by fineness of training, so also, 
a polite nation differs from a savage one, first, by the refine- 
ment of its nature, and secondly by the delicacy of its cus- 
toms. 

In the completeness of custom, which is the nation’s self- 
government, there are three stages—first, fineness in method 
of doing or of being ;—called the manner or moral of acts; 
secondly, firmness in holding such method after adoption, so 
that it shall become a habit in the character: 7. e., a constant 
“having” or “behaving ;” and, lastly, ethical power in per- 
formance and endurance, which is the skill following on 
habit, and the ease reached by frequency of right doing. 

The sensibility of the nation is indicated by the fineness of 
its customs; its courage, continence, and self-respect by its 
persistence in them. 

By sensibility I mean its natural perception of beauty, 
fitness, and rightness; or of what is lovely, decent, and 
just : faculties dependent much on race, and the primal signs 
of fine breeding in man; but cultivable also by education, 
and necessarily perishing without it. True education has, 
indeed, no other function than the development of these 


182 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


faculties, and of the relative will. It has been the great error 
of modern intelligence to mistake science for education. You 
do not educate a man by telling him what he knew not, but 
by making him what he was not. 

And making him what he will remain for ever: for ne 
wash of weeds will bring back the faded purple. And in 
that dyeing there are two processes—first, the cleansing and 
wringing-out, which is the baptism with water; and then the 
infusing of the blue and scarlet colours, gentleness and justice, 
which is the baptism with fire. 

107.* The customs and manners of a sensitive and highly- 
trained race are always Vital: that is to say, they are orderly 
manifestations of intense life, like the habitual action of the 
fingers of amusician. The customs and manners of a vile and 
rude race, on the contrary, are conditions of decay: they are 
not, properly speaking, habits, but incrustations; not re- 
straints, or forms, of life; but gangrenes, noisome, and the 
beginnings of death. 

And generally, so far as custom attaches itself to indolence 
instead of action, and to prejudice instead of perception, it 
takes this deadly character, so that thus 


Custom hangs upon us with a weight 
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life. 


But that weight, if it become impetus, (living instead of 
dead weight) is just what gives value to custom, when it 
works with life, instead of against it. 

108. The high ethical training of a nation implies perfect 
Grace, Pitifulness, and Peace; it is irreconcilably inconsistent 
with filthy or mechanical employments,—with the desire of 
money,—and with mental states of anxiety, jealousy, or in- 
difference to pain. The present insensibility of the upper 
classes of Europe to the surrounding aspects of suffering, 
uncleanness, and crime, binds them not only into one responsi- 
bility with the sin, but into one dishonour with the foulness, 





[* Think over this paragraph carefully; it should have been much 
expanded to be quite intelligible ; but it contains all that I want it to 
contain. | 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 183 


which rot at their thresholds. The crimes daily recorded in 
the police-courts of London and Paris (and much more those 
which are unrecorded) are a disgrace to the whole body poli- 
tic ;* they are, as in the body natural, stains of disease on a 
face of delicate skin, making the delicacy itself frightful. 
Similarly, the filth and poverty permitted or ignored in the 
midst of us are as dishonourable to the whole social body, as 
in the body natural it is to wash the face, but leave the hands 
and feet foul. Christ’s way is the only true one: begin at the 
feet; the face will take care of itself. 

109. Yet, since necessarily, in the frame of a nation, noth- 
ing but the head can be of gold, and the feet, for the work 
they have to do, must be part of iron, part of clay ;—foul or 
mechanical work is always reduced by a noble race to the 
minimum in quantity ; and, even then, performed and en- 
dured, not without sense of degradation, as a fine temper is 
wounded by the sight of the lower offices of the body. The 
highest conditions of human society reached hitherto have 
cast such work to slaves; but supposing slavery of a politi- 
cally defined kind to be done away with, mechanical and foul 
employment must, in alk highly organized states, take the as- 
pect either of punishment or probation. All criminals should 
at once be set to the most dangerous and painful forms of it, 
especially to work in mines and at furnaces,+ so as to relieve 


* «The ordinary brute, who flourishes in the very centre of ornate 
life, tells us of unknown depths on the verge of which we totter, being 
bound to thank our stars every day we live that there is not a general 
outbreak, and a revolt from the yoke of civilization.” — Times leader, 
Dec. 25, 1862. Admitting that our stars are to be thanked for our safety, 
whom are we to thank for the danger ? 

| Our politicians, even the best of them, regard only the distress 
caused by the fatlure of mechanical labour. The degradation caused 
by its excess is a far more serious subject of thought, and of future fear. 
I shall examine this part of our subject at length hereafter. There can 
hardly be any doubt, at present, cast on the truth of the above passages, 
as all the great thinkers are unanimous on the matter. Plato’s words 
are terrific in their scorn and pity whenever he touches on the mechan- 
ical arts. He calls the men employed in them not even human, but 
partially and diminutively human, ‘‘av6pwzicxo.,” and opposes such 
work to noble occupations, not merely as prison is opposed to freedom 


184 MUNERA PULVERIZ. 


the innocent population as far as possible: of merely rough 
(not mechanical) manual labour, especially agricultural, a large 
portion should be done by the upper classes ;—bodily health, and 
sufficient contrast and repose for the mental functions, being un- 
attainable without it ; what necessarily inferior labour remains 
to be done, as especially in manufactures, should, and always 
will, when the relations of society are reverent and harmoni- 
ous, fall to the lot of those who, for the time, are fit for noth- 
ing better. For as, whatever the perfectness of the educa- 
tional system, there must remain infinite differences between 
the natures and capacities of men ; and these differing natures 
are generally rangeable under the two qualities of lordly, (or 
tending towards rule, construction, and harmony), and servile 
(or tending towards misrule, destruction, and discord) ; and, 


but as a convict’s dishonoured prison is to the temple (escape from them 
being like that of a criminal to the sanctuary) ; and the destruction 
caused by them being of soul no less than body.— Rep. vi. 9. Compare 
Laws, v.11. Xenophon dwells on the evil of occupations at the fur- 
nace and especially their ‘‘daexoAla, want of leisure.”—Heon. i. 4. 
(Modern England, with all its pride of education, has lost that first sense 
of the word ‘school ;” and till it recover that, it will find no other 
rightly.) His word for the harm to the soul is to ** break ” it, as we say 
of the heart.—Zcon. i. 6. And herein, also, is the root of the scorn, 
otherwise apparently most strange and cruel, with which Homer, Dante, 
and Shakspeare always speak of the populace ; for it is entirely true 
that, in great states, the lower orders are low by nature as well as by 
task, being precisely that part of the commonwealth which has been 
thrust down for its coarseness or unworthiness (by coarseness I mean 
especially insensibility and irreverence—the ‘‘ profane” of Horace) ; 
and when this ceases to be so, and the corruption and profanity are in 
the higher instead of the lower orders, there arises, first, helpless confu- 
sion ; then, if the lower classes deserve power, ensues swift revolution, 
and they get it; but if neither the populace nor their rulers deserve it, 
there follows mere darkness and dissolution, till, out of the putrid ele- 
ments, some new capacity of order rises, like grass on a grave; if not, 
there is no more hope, nor shadow of turning, for that nation. Atropos 
has her way with it. 

So that the law of national health is like that of a great lake or sea, 
in perfect but slow circulation, letting the dregs fall continually to the 
lowest place, and the clear water rise ; yet so as that there shall be no 
neglect of the lower orders, but perfect supervision and sympathy, so 
that if one member suffer, all members shall suffer with it, 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 185 


since the lordly part is only in a state of profitableness while 
ruling, and the servile only in a state of redeemableness while 
serving, the whole health of the state depends on the mani- 
fest separation of these two elements of its mind; for, if the 
servile part be not separated and rendered visible in service, 
it mixes with, and corrupts, the entire body of the state ; and 
if the lordly part be not distinguished, and set to rule, it is 
crushed and lost, being turned to no account, so that the 
rarest qualities of the nation are all given to it in vain.* 


II. Laws. 

110. These are the definitions and bonds of custom, or of 
what the nation desires should become custom. 

Law is either archic,} (of direction), meristic, (of division), 
or critic, (of judgment). 

Archic law is that of appointment and precept: it defines 
what is and is not to be done. 

Meristic law is that of balance and distribution: it defines 
what is and is not to be possessed. 

Critic law is that of discernment and award: it defines 
what is and is not to be suffered. 


111. A. Arcutc Law. If we choose to unite the laws of 
precept and distribution under the head of “ statutes,” all law 


* “ Orlyns, Kal BAAws yryvouéerns.” (Little, and that little born in vain.) 

ue bitter sentence never was so true as at this day. 

[+ This following note is a mere cluster of memoranda, but I keep it 
for reference.] 'Thetic, or Thesmic, would perhaps be a better term 
than archic; but liable to be confused with some which we shall want 
relating to Theoria. ‘The administrators of the three great divisions of 
law are severally Archons, Merists, and Dicasts. 'The Archons are the 
true princes, or beginners of things ; or leaders (as of an orchestra). 
The Merists are properly the Domini, or Lords of houses and nations. 
The Dicasts, properly, the judges, and that with Olympian justice, 
which reaches to heaven and hell. The violation of archic law is auaptia 
(error), rorvnpta (failure), or mAnuuéAcia (discord). The violation of mer- 
istic lawis dvoula (iniquity). The violation of criticlaw is dd.«la (injury) 
Iniquity is the central generic term ; for all law is fatal ; it is the divi- 
sion to men of their fate ; as the fold of their pasture, it is véues ; as the 
assigning of their portion, potpa. 


186 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


is simply either of statute or judgment ; that is, first the es- 
tablishment of ordinance, and, secondly, the assignment of 
the reward, or penalty, due to its observance or violation. 

To some extent these two forms of law must be associated, 
and, with every ordinance, the penalty of disobedience to it 
be also determined. But since the degrees and guilt of diso- 
bedience vary, the determination of due reward and punish- 
ment must be modified by discernment of special fact, which 
is peculiarly the office of the judge, as distinguished from 
that of the lawgiver and law-sustainer, or king; not but that 
the two offices are always theoretically, and in early stages, 
or limited numbers, of society, are often practically, united in 
the same person or persons. 

112. Also, it is necessary to keep clearly in view the dis- 
tinction between these two kinds of law, because the possible 
range of law is wider in proportion to their separation. There 
are many points of conduct respecting which the nation may 
wisely express its will by a written precept or resolve, yet not 
enforce it by penalty:* and the expedient degree of penalty 
is always quite a separate consideration from the expedience 
of the statute ; for the statute may often be better enforced 
by mercy than severity, and is also easier in the bearing, and 
less likely to be abrogated. Farther, laws of precept have 
reference especially to youth, and concern themselves with 
training; but laws of judgment to manhood, and concern 
themselves with remedy and reward. ‘There is a highly curi- 
ous feeling in the English mind against educational law: we 
think no man’s liberty should be interfered with till he has 
done irrevocable wrong ; whereas it is then just too late for 
the only gracious and kingly interference, which is to hinder 
him from doing it. Make your educational laws strict, and 


[* This isthe only sentence which, in revising these essays, I am now 
inclined to question ; but the point is one of extreme difficulty. There 
might be a law, for instance, of curfew, that candles should be put out, 
unless for necessary service, at such and such an hour, the idea of 
‘** necessary service” being quite indefinable, and no penalty possible ; 
yet there would be a distinct consciousness of illegal conduct in young 
ladies’ minds who danced by candlelight till dawn. | 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 187 


your criminal ones may be gentle ; but, leave youth its liberty, 
and you will have to dig dungeons for age. And it is good 
for a man that he ‘wear the yoke in his youth:” for the 
reins may then be of silken thread ; and with sweet chime of 
silver bells at the bridle; but, for the captivity of age, you 
must forge the iron fetter, and cast the passing bell. 

113. Since no law can be, in a final or true sense, estab- 
lished, but by right, (all unjust laws involving the ultimate 
necessity of their own abrogation), the law-giving can only 
become a law-sustaining power in so far as it is Royal, or 
“rioht doing ;”—in so far, that is, as it rules, not mis- 
rules, and orders, not dis-orders, the things submitted to it. 
Throned on this rock of justice, the kingly power becomes 
established and establishing ; ‘‘ Getos,” or divine, and, there- 
fore, it is literally true that no ruler can err, so long as he is a 
ruler, or dpxwv ovdcis duapraver TOTE OTav dpywv 7 ; perverted by 
careless thought, which has cost the world somewhat, into— 
“the king can do no wrong.” 


114, B. Merisric Law,* or that of the tenure of property, 
first determines what every individual possesses by right, and 
secures it to him; and what he possesses by wrong, and de- 
prives him of it. But it has a far higher provisory function : 
it determines what every man should possess, and puts it 
within his reach on due conditions ; and what he should not 
possess, and puts this out of his reach, conclusively. 

115. Every article of human wealth has certain conditions 
attached to its merited possession; when these are unob- 
served, possession becomes rapine. And the object of meris- 
tic law is not only to secure to every man his rightful share 
(the share, that is, which he has worked for, produced, or re- 
ceived by gift from a rightful owner), but to enforce the due 
conditions of possession, as far as law may conveniently reach ; 
for instance, that land shall not be wantonly allowed to run 
to waste, that streams shall not be poisoned by the persons 
through whose properties they pass, nor air be rendered un- 


[* Read this and the next paragraph with attention; they contain 
clear statements, which I cannot mend, of things most necegsary. | 


183 MUNERA PULVERIS, 


wholesome beyond given limits. Laws of this kind exist al- 
ready in rudimentary degree, but need large development: 
the just laws respecting the possession of works of art have 
not hitherto been so much as conceived, and the daily loss of 
national wealth, and of its use, in this respect, is quite incal- 
culable. And these laws need revision quite as much respect- 
ing property in national as in private hands. For instance: 
the public are under a vague impression that, because they 
have paid for the contents of the British Museum, every one 
has an equal right to see and to handle them. But the pub- 
lic have similarly paid for the contents of Woolwich arsenal ; 
yet do not expect free access to it, or handling of its contents. 
The British Museum is neither a free circulating library, nor 
a free school: it is a place for the safe preservation, and ex- 
hibition on due occasion, of unique books, unique objects of 
natural history, and unique works of art; its books can no 
more be used by everybody than its coins can be handled, or 
its statues cast. There ought to be free libraries in every 
quarter of London, with large and complete reading-rooms 
attached ; so also free educational museums should be open 
in every quarter of London, all day long, until late at night, 
well lighted, well catalogued, and rich in contents both of art 
and natural history. But neither the British Museum nor 
National Gallery is a school; they are treasuries ; and both 
should be severely restricted in access and in use, Unless 
some order of this kind is made, and that soon, for the MSS. 
department of the Museum, (its superintendents have sorrow- 
fully told me this, and repeatedly), the best MSS. in the col- 
lection will be destroyed, irretrievably, by the careless and 
continual handling to which they are now subjected. 

Finally, in certain conditions of a nation’s progress, laws 
limiting accumulation of any kind of property may be found 
expedient. 


116. C. Criric Law determines questions of injury, and 
assigns due rewards and punishments to conduct. 

Two curious economical questions arise laterally with re- 
spect to this branch of law, namely, the cost of crime, and 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 189 


the cost of judgment. The cost of crime is endured by na- 
tions ignorantly, that expense being nowhere stated in their 
budgets ; the cost of judgment, patiently, (provided only it can 
be had pure for the money), because the science, or perhaps 
we ought rather to say the art, of law, is felt to found a noble 
profession and discipline ; so that civilized nations are usually 
glad that a number of persons should be supported by exer- 
cise in oratory and analysis. But it has not yet been calcu- 
lated what the practical value might have been, in other di- 
rections, of the intelligence now occupied in deciding, through 
courses of years, what might have been decided as justly, had 
the date of judgment been fixed, in as many hours. Imagine 
one half of the funds which any great nation devotes to dis- 
pute by law, applied to the determination of physical ques- 
tions in medicine, agriculture, and theoretic science ; and 
calculate the probable results within the next ten years! 

I say nothing yet of the more deadly, more lamentable loss, 
involved in the use of purchased, instead of personal, justice 
—“ éraxt@ map G\\wv—azropia oiketwv.” 

117. In order to true analysis of critic law, we must under- 
stand the real meaning of the word “ injury.” 

We commonly understand by it, any kind of harm done by 
one man to another; but we do not define the idea of harm : 
sometimes we limit it to the harm which the sufferer is con- 
scious of ; whereas much the worst injuries are those he is 
unconscious of ; and, at other times, we limit the idea to vio- 
lence, or restraint ; whereas much the worse forms of injury 
are to be accomplished by indolence, and the withdrawal of 
restraint. 

118. “Injury” is then simply the refusal, or violation of, 
any man’s right or claim upon his fellows: which claim, much 
talked of in modern times, under the term “right,” is mainly 
resolvable into two branches: a man’s claim not to be hin- 
dered from doing what he should; and his claim to be hin- 
dered from doing what he should not; these two forms of 
hindrance being intensified by reward, help, and fortune, or 
Fors, on one side, and by punishment, impediment, and even 
final arrest, or Mors, on the other. 


190 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


119. Now, in order to a man’s obtaining these two rights 
it is clearly needful that the worth of him should be approxi- 
mately known ; as well as the want of worth, which has, un- 
happily, been usually the principal subject of study for critic 
law, careful hitherto only to mark degrees of de-merit, instead 
of merit ;—assigning, indeed, to the Deficiencies (not always, 
alas! even to these) just estimate, fine, or penalty; but to 
the Zfficiencies, on the other side, which are by much the 
more interesting, as well as the only profitable part of its 
subject, assigning neither estimate nor aid. 

120. Now, it is in this higher and perfect function of critic 
law, enabling instead of disabling, that it becomes truly 
Kingly, instead of Draconic: (what Providence gave the 
great, wrathful legislator his name ?): that is, it becomes the 
law of man and of life, instead of the law of the worm and of 
death—both of these laws being set in changeless poise one 
against another, and the enforcement of both being the eternal 
function of the lawgiver, and true claim of every living soul : 
such claim being indeed strong to be mercifully hindered, 
and even, if need be, abolished, when longer existence means 
only deeper destruction, but stronger still to be mercifully 
helped, and recreated, when longer existence and new crea- 
tion mean nobler life. So that reward and punishment will 
be found to resolve themselves mainly* into help and hin- 
drance ; and these again will issue naturally from true recog- 
nition of deserving, and the just reverence and just wrath 
which follow instinctively on such recognition. 

121. I say, “follow,” but, in reality, they are part of the 
recognition. Reverence is as instinctive as anger ;—both of 
them instant on true vision: it is sight and understanding 
that we have to teach, and these are reverence. Make a man 
perceive worth, and in its reflection he sees his own relative 
unworth, and worships thereupon inevitably, not with stiff 
courtesy, but rejoicingly, passionately, and, best of all, rest- 
fully: for the inner capacity of awe and love is infinite in 

[* Mainly; not altogether. Conclusive reward of high virtue is 


loving and crowning, not helping ; and conclusive punishment of deep 
vice is hating and crushing, not merely hindering. ] 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 191 


man ; and only in finding these, can we find peace. And the 
common insolences and petulances of the people, and their 
talk of equality, are not irreverence in them in the least, but 
mere blindness, stupefaction, and fog in the brains,* the first 
sign of any cleansing away of which is, that they gain some 
power of discerning, and some patience in submitting to, 
their true counsellors and governors. In the mode of such 
discernment consists the real “constitution” of the state, 
more than in the titles or offices of the discerned person ; for 
it is no matter, save in degree of mischief, to what office a 
man is appointed, if he cannot fulfil it. 


122. III. Government sy Covncit. 

This is the determination, by living authority, of the na- 
tional conduct to be observed under existing circumstances ; 
and the modification or enlargement, abrogation or enforce- 
ment, of the code of national law according to present needs 
or purposes. This government is necessarily always by coun- 
cil, for though the authority of it may be vested in one per- 
son, that person cannot form any opinion on a matter of pub- 
lic interest but by (voluntarily or involuntarily) submitting 
himself to the influence of others. 

This goverment is always twofold—visible and invisible. 

The visible government is that which nominally carries on 
the national business ; determines its foreign relations, raises 
taxes, levies soldiers, orders war or peace, and otherwise be- 
comes the arbiter of the national fortune. The invisible 
government is that exercised by all energetic and intelligent 
men, each in his sphere, regulating the inner will and secret 
ways of the people, essentially forming its character, and pre- 
paring its fate. 

Visible governments are the toys of some nations, the dis- 
eases of others, the harness of some, the burdens of more, 


* Compare Chaucer’s ‘ villany ” (clownishness). 
Full foul and chorlishe seemed she, 
And eke villanous for to be, 
And little coulde of norture 
To worship any creature, 


192 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


the necessity of all. Sometimes their career is quite distinet 
from that of the people, and to write it, as the national his- 
tory, is as if one should number the accidents which befall a 
man’s weapons and wardrobe, and call the list. his biography. 
Nevertheless, a truly noble and wise nation necessarily has a 
noble and wise visible government, for its wisdom issues in 
that conclusively. 

123. Visible governments are, in their agencies, capable of 
three pure forms, and of no more than three. 

They are either monarchies, where the authority is vested 
in one person ; oligarchies, when it is vested in a minority ; 
or democracies, when vested in a majority. 

But these three forms are not only, in practice, variously 
limited and combined, but capable of infinite difference in 
character and use, receiving specific names according to their 
variations ; which names, being nowise agreed upon, nor con- 
sistently used, either in thought or writing, no man can at 
present tell, in speaking of any kind of government, whether 
he is understood ; nor, in hearing, whether he understands. 
Thus we usually call a just government by one person a mon- 
archy, and an unjust or cruel one, a tyranny: this might be 
reasonable if it had reference to the divinity of true govern- 
ment; but to limit the term ‘ oligarchy” to government by 
afew rich people, and to call government by a few wise or 
noble people “aristocracy,” is evidently absurd, unless it were 
proved that rich people never could be wise, or noble people 
rich ; and farther absurd, because there are other distinctions 
in character, as well as riches or wisdom (greater purity of 
race, or strength of purpose, for instance), which may give 
the power of government to the few. So that if we had to 
give names to every group or kind of minority, we should 
have verbiage enough. But there is only one right name— 
“oligarchy.” 

124. So also the terms “republic” and ‘‘ democracy ” * are 


[* I leave this paragraph, in every syllable, as it was written, during 
the rage of the American war; it was meant to refer, however, chiefly 
to the Northerns: what modifieations its hot and partial terms require I 
will give in another place: let it stand nere as it stood. ] 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 193 


confused, especially in modern use; and both of them are 
liable to every sort of misconception. A republic means, 
properly, a polity in which the state, with its all, is at every 
man’s service, and every man, with his all, at the state’s ser- 
vice—(people are apt to lose sight of the last condition), but 
its government may nevertheless be oligarchic (consular, or 
decemviral, for instance), or monarchic (dictatorial). But a 
democracy means a state in which the government rests 
directly with the majority of the citizens. And both these 
conditions have been judged only by such accidents and 
aspects of them as each of us has had experience of; and 
sometimes both have been confused with anarchy, as it is the 
fashion at present to talk of the “ failure of republican insti- 
tutions in America,” when there has never yet been in America 
any such thing as an institution, but only defiance of institu- 
tion ; neither any such thing as a res-publica, but only a mul- 
litudinous res-privata ; every man for himself. It is not re- 
publicanism which fails now in America; it is your model 
science of political economy, brought to its perfect practice. 
‘There you may see competition, and the “law of demand and 
supply ” (especially in paper), in beautiful and unhindered 
operation.* Lust of wealth, and trust in it; vulgar faith in 
magnitude and multitude, instead of nobleness ; besides that 
faith natural to backwoodsmen—‘“ lucum ligna,” +—perpetual 
self-contemplation, issuing in passionate vanity; total igno- 
rance of the finer and higher arts, and of all that they teach 
and bestow ; and the discontent of energetic minds unoccu- 
pied, frantic with hope of uncomprehended change, and prog- 
ress they know not whither ; [—these are the things that 


*Supply and demand! Alas! for what noble work was there ever 
any audible ‘‘demand” in that poor sense (Past and Present)? Nay, 
the demand is not loud, even for ignoble work. See‘t Average Earnings 
of Betty Taylor,” in Times of 4th February of this year [1863]: 
‘‘ Worked from’ Monday morning at 8 A.M. to Friday night at 5.380 P.M. 
for 1s. 53d.”—Laissez faire. |This kind of slavery finds no Abolitionists 
that I hear of. ] 

[+ ** That the sacred grove is nothing but logs.”’] 

t Ames, by report of Waldo Emerson, says ‘* that a monarchy is a 
merchantman, which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and 


194 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


have “failed” in America ; and yet not altogether failed—it 
is not collapse, but collision; the greatest railroad accident 
on record, with fire caught from the furnace, and Catiline’s 
quenching ‘‘ non aqua, sed ruini.” * But I see not, in any of 
our talk of them, justice enough done to their erratic strength 
of purpose, nor any estimate taken of the strength of endur- 
ance of domestic sorrow, in what their women and children 
suppose a righteous cause. And out of that endurance and 
suffering, its own fruit will be born with time ; [noét abolition 
of slavery, however. See § 130.] and Carlyle’s prophecy of 
them (June, 1850), as it has now come true in the first clause, 
will, in the last :— 

** America, too, will find that caucuses, divisionalists, stump- 
oratory, and speeches to Buncombe will not carry men to the 
immortal gods ; that the Washington Congress, and constitu- 
tional battle of Kilkenny cats is there, as here, naught for 
such objects ; quite incompetent for such ; and, in fine, that 
said sublime constitutional arrangement will require to be 
(with terrible throes, and travail such as few expect yet) re- 
modelled, abridged, extended, suppressed, torn asunder, put 
together again—not without heroic labour and effort, quite 
other than that of the stump-orator and the revival preacher, 
one day.” 

125.+ Understand, then, once for all, that no form of gov- 
ernment, provided it be a government at all, is, as such, to be 
either condemned or praised, or contested for in anywise, but 
go to the bottom ; whilst a republic is a raft, which would never sink, 
but.then your feet are always in the water.’ Yes, that is comfortable ; 
and though your raft cannot sink (being too worthless for that), it may 
go to pieces, I suppose, when the four winds (your only pilots) steer 
competitively from its four corners, and carry it, ds dmwpivds Bopéns 
d¢opénow axdv0as, and then more than your feet will be in the water. 

[* “Not with water, but with ruin.” The worst ruin being that 
which the Americans chiefly boast of. They sent all their best and 
honestest youths, Harvard University men and the like, to that accursed 
war; got them nearly all shot ; wrote pretty biographies (to the ages of 
17, 18, 19) and epitaphs for them; and so, haying washed all the salt 
out of the nation in blood, left themselves to putrefaction, and the 


morality of New York. | 
[+ This paragraph contains the gist of all that precede. | 


MUNERA PULVERIS. » ie J) 


by fools. But all forms of government are good just so far 
as they attain this one vital necessity of policy—that the wise 
and kind, few or many, shall govern the unwise and unkind ; and 
they are evil so far as they miss of this, or reverse it. Nor 
does the form, in any case, signify one whit, but its firmness, 
and adaptation to the need ; for if there be many foolish per- 
sons in a state, and few wise, then it is good that the few 
govern ; and if there be many wise, and few foolish, then it is 
good that the many govern; and if many be wise, yet one 
wiser, then it is good that one should govern ; and so on. 
Thus, we may have “the ant’s republic, and the realm of 
bees,” both good in their kind; one for groping, and the 
other for building ; and nobler still, for flying ;—the Ducal 
monarchy * of those 


Intelligent of seasons, that set forth 
The aery caravan, high over seas. 


126. Nor need we want examples, among the inferior creat-: 
ures, of dissoluteness, as well as resoluteness, in government. 
I once saw democracy finely illustrated by the beetles of 
North Switzerland, who by universal suffrage, and elytric ac- 
clamation, one May twilight, carried it, that they would fly 
over the Lake of Zug; and flew short, to the great disfigure- 
ment of the Lake of Zug,—Kav6apov Axwyv—over some leagues 
square, and to the close of the cockchafer democracy for that 
year. Then, for tyranny, the old fable of the frogs and the 
stork finely touches one form of it; but truth will image it 
more closely than fable, for tyranny is not complete when it 
is only over the idle, but when it is over the laborious and 
the blind. This description of pelicans and.climbing perch, 
which I find quoted in one of our popular natural histories, 
out of Sir Emerson Tennant’s Ceylon, comes as near as may 
be to the true image of the thing :— 


[* Whenever you are puzzled by any apparently mistaken use of words 
in these essays, take your dictionary, remembering I had to fix terms, as 
well as principles. A Duke is a ‘‘dux”’ or ‘‘leader;”’ the flying wedge 
of cranes is under a ‘‘ducal monarch ”’—a very different personage 
from a queen bee. The Venetians, with a beautiful instinct, geve the 
name totheir King of the Sea. ] 


196 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


“Heavy rains came on, and as we stood on the higk 
ground, we observed a pelican on the margin of the shallow 
pool gorging himself; our people went towards him, and 
raised a cry of ‘Fish, fish!’ We hurried down, and found 
numbers of fish struggling upward through the grass, in the 
rills formed by the trickling of the rain. There was scarcely 
water to cover them, but nevertheless they made rapid prog- 
ress up the bank, on which our followers collected about 
two baskets of them. They were forcing their way up the 
knoll, and had they not been interrupted, first by the pelican, 
and afterwards by ourselves, they would in a few minutes 
have gained the highest point, and descended on the other 
side into a pool which formed another portion of the tank, 
In going this distance, however, they must have used muscu- 
lar exertion enough to have taken them half a mile on level 
eround ; for at these places all the cattle and wild animals of 
the neighbourhood had latterly come to drink, so that the 
surface was everywhere indented with footmarks, in addition 
to the cracks in the surrounding baked mud, into which the 
fish tumbled in their progress. In those holes, which were 
deep, and the sides perpendicular, they remained to die, and 
were carried off by kites and crows.” * 

127. But whether governments be bad or good, one gen- 
eral disadvantage seems to attach to them in modern times— 
that they are all costly.t+ This, however, is not essentially 
the fault of the governments. If nations choose to play at 
war, they will always find their governments willing to lead 
the game, and soon coming under that term of Aristophanes, 
“Kamndo. aoridwv,” ‘ shield-sellers.” And when (ap ézt 
amnpatt}t) the shields take the form of iron ships, with ap- 


[* This is a perfect picture of the French under the tyrannies of their 
Pelican Kings, before the Revolution. But they must find other than 
Pelican Kings—or rather, Pelican Kings of the Divine brood, that feed 
their children, and with their best blood. 

[+ Read carefully, from this point ; because here begins the statement 
of things requiring to be done, which I am now re-trying to make defi- 
nite in Fors Cluvigera. | 

{t ‘‘ Evil on the top of Evil.” Delphic oracle, meaning iron on the 
anvil. | 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 197 


paratus “for defence against liquid fire,’—as I see by latest 
accounts they are now arranging the decks in English 
dockyards—they become costly biers enough for the grey 
convoy of chief mourner waves, wreathed with funereal foam, 
to bear back the dead upon ; the massy shoulders of those 
corpse-bearers being intended for quite other work, and to 
bear the living, and food for the living, if we would let them. 
128. Nor have we the least right to complain of our gov- 
ernments being expensive, so long as we set the government 
49 do precisely the work which brings no return. If our pres- 
ent doctrines of political economy be just, let us trust them 
to the utmost ; take that war business out of the government’s 
hands, and test therein the principles of supply and demand. 
Let our future sieges of Sebastopol be done by contract—no 
capture, no pay—(I admit that things might sometimes go 
better so) ; and let us sell the commands of our prospective 
battles, with our vicarages, to the lowest bidder ; so may we 
have cheap victories, and divinity. On the other hand, if we 
have so much suspicion of our science that we dare not trust 
it on military or spiritual business, would it not be but rea- 
sonable to try whether some authoritative handling may not 
prosper in matters utilitarian? If we were to set our govern- 
ments to do useful things instead of mischievous, possibly 
even the apparatus itself might in time come to be less costly. 
The machine, applied to the building of the house, might per- 
haps pay, when it seems not to pay, applied to pulling it 
down. If we made in our dockyards ships to carry timber 
and coals, instead of cannon, and with provision for the 
brightening of domestic solid culinary fire, instead of for the 
seattering of liquid hostile fire, if might have some effect on 
the taxes. Or suppose that we tried the experiment on land 
instead of water carriage ; already the government, not unap- 
proved, carries letters and parcels for us; larger packages 
may in time follow ;—even general merchandise—why not, at 
last, ourselves? Had the money spent in local mistakes and 
vain private litigation, on the railroads of England, been laid 
out, instead, under proper government restraint, on really 
useful railroad work, and had no absurd expense been in- 


198 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


curred in ornamenting stations, we might already have had,— 
what ultimately it will be found we must have,—quadruple 
rails, two for passengers, and two for traffic,on every great 
line ; and we might have been carried in swift safety, and 
watched and warded by well-paid pointsmen, for half the 
present fares. [For, of course, a railroad company is merely 
an association of turnpike-keepers, who make the tolls as high 
as they can, not to mend the roads with, but to pocket. The 
public will in time discover this, and do away with turnpikes 
on railroads, as on all other public-ways. | 

129. Suppose it should thus turn out, finally, that a true 
government set to true work, instead of being a costly engine, 
was a paying one? that your government, rightly organized, 
instead of itself subsisting by an income-tax, would produce 
its subjects some subsistence in the shape of an income divi- 
dend ?—ypolice, and judges duly paid besides, only with less 
work than the state at present provides for them. 

A true government set to true work !—Not easily to be 
imagined, still less obtained ; but not beyond human hope or 
ingenuity. Only you will have to alter your election systems 
somewhat, first. Not by universal suffrage, nor by votes pur- 
chasable with beer, is such government to be had. That is 
to say, not by universal equal suffrage. Every man upwards 
of twenty, who has been convicted of no legal crime, should 
have his say in this matter ; but afterwards a louder voice, 
as he grows older, and approves himself wiser. If he has one 
vote at twenty, he should have two at thirty, four at forty, ten 
at fifty. For every single vote which he has with an income 
of a hundred a year, he should have ten with an income of a 
thousand, (provided you first see to it that wealth is, as nature 
intended, it to be, the reward of sagacity and industry—not 
of good luck in a soramble or a lottery). For every single 
vote which he had as subordinate in any business, he should 
have two when he became a master; and every office and 
authority nationally bestowed, implying trustworthiness and 
intellect, should have its known proportional number of votes 
attached to it, But into the detail and working of a true 
system in these matters we cannot now enter; we are con- 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 199 


cerned as yet with definitions only, and statements of first 
principles, which will be established now sufficiently for our 
purposes when we have examined the nature of that form of 
government last on the list in § 105,—the purely ‘“ Magistral,” 
exciting at present its full ea of public notice, under its 
ambiguous title of “slavery.” 

130. I have not, however, been able to ascertain in definite 
terms, from the declaimers against slavery, what they under- 
stand by it. If they mean only the imprisonment or compul- 
sion of one person by another, such imprisonment or compul- 
sion being in many cases highly expedient, slavery, so defined, 
would be no evil in itself, but only in its abuse; that is, when 
men are slaves, who should not be, or masters, who should 
not be, or even the fittest characters for either state, placed 
in it under conditions which should not be. It is not, for 
instance, a necessary condition of slavery, nor a desirable one, 
that parents should be separated from children, or husbands 
from wives ; but the institution of war, against which people 
declaim with less violence, effects such separations,—not un- 
frequently in a very permanent manner. ‘To press a sailor, 
seize a white youth by conscription for a soldier, or carry off 
a black one for a labourer, may all be right acts, or all wrong 
ones, according to needs and circumstances. It is wrong to 
scourge 4 man unnecessarily. So it is to shoot him. Both 
must be done on occasion ; and it is better and kinder to flog 
a man to his work, than to leave him idle till he robs, and 
flog him afterwards. The essential thing for all creatures is 
to be made to do right; how they are made to do it—by 
pleasant promises, or hard necessities, pathetic oratory, or 
the whip—is comparatively immaterial.* To be deceived is 
perhaps as incompatible with human dignity as to be whipped ; 
and I suspect the last method to be not the worst, for the 
help of many individuals. The Jewish nation throve under 
it, in the hand of a monarch reputed not unwise ; it is only 
the change of whip for scorpion which is inexpedient ; and 

[* Permit me to enfore and reinforce this statement, with all earnest: 


ness. It is the sum of what needs most to be understood in the matter 
of education. | 


200 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


that change is as likely to come to pass on the side of license 
as of law. For the true scorpion whips are those of the na- 
tion’s pleasant vices, which are to it as St. John’s locusts— 
crown on the head, ravin in the mouth, and sting in the tail. 
If it will not bear the rule of Athena and Apollo, who shep- 
herd ‘without smiting (od wAnyj veésovres), Athena at last calls 
no more in the corners of the streets; and then follows the 
rule of Tisiphone, who smites without shepherding. 

131. If, however, by slavery, instead of absolute compul- 
sion, is meant the purchase, by money, of the right of compulsion, 
such purchase is necessarily made whenever a portion of any 
territory is transferred, for money, from one monarch to 
another: which has happened frequently enough in history, 
without its being supposed that the inhabitants of the dis- 
tricts so transferred became therefore slaves. In this, as in 
the former case, the dispute seems about the fashion of the 
thing, rather than the fact of it. There are two rocks in 
mid-sea, on each of which, neglected equally by instructive 
and commercial powers, a handful of inhabitants live as they 
may. ‘lwo merchants bid for the two properties, but not in 
the same terms. One bids for the people, buys them, and 
sets them to work, under pain of scourge; the other bids for 
the rock, buys i, and throws the inhabitants into the sea. 
The former is the American, the latter the English method, 
of slavery ; much is to be said for, and something against, 
both, which I hope to say in due time and place.* 

132. If, however, slavery mean not merely the purchase of 
the right of compulsion, but the purchase of the body and soul of 
the creature itself for money, it is not, I think, among the black 
races that purchases of this kind are most extensively made, 
or that separate souls of a fine make fetch the highest price. 
This branch of the inquiry we shall have occasion also to fol- 
low out at some length, for in the worst instances of the sell- 
ing of souls, we are apt to get, when we ask if the sale is valid, 
only Pyrrhon’s answer +—‘“ None can know.” 

[* A pregnant paragraph, meant against English and Scotch land- 
lords who drive their people oT the land ] 

{+ In Lucian’s dialogue, ‘‘ The sale of lives.’’] 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 201 


133. The fact is that slavery is not a political institution at 
all, but an inherent, natural, and eternal inheritance of a large 
portion of the human race—to whom, the more you give of 
their own free will, the more slaves they will make themselves. 
In common parlance, we idly confuse captivity with slavery, and 
are always thinking of the difference between pine-trunks (Ariel 
in the pine), and cowslip-bells (‘‘in the cowslip-bell I lie ”), or 
between carrying wood and drinking (Caliban’s slavery and 
freedom), instead of noting the far more serious differences be: 
tween Ariel and Caliban themselves, and the means by which, 
practically, that difference may be brought about or diminished. 

134.* Plato’s slave, in the Polity, who, well dressed and 
washed, aspires to the hand of his master’s daughter, corre- 
sponds curiously to Caliban attacking Prospero’s cell; and 
there is an undercurrent of meaning throughout, in the Ten. 
pest as well as in the Merchant of Venice ; referring in this case 
to government, as in that to commerce. Miranda} (“the 
wonderful,” so addressed first by Ferdinand, ‘‘Oh, you won- 
der!”) corresponds to Homer’s Arete: Ariel and Caliban aro 


[* I raise this analysis of the Tempest into my text ; but it is nothing 
but a hurried note, which I may never have time to expand. I have 
retouched it here and there a little, however. ] 

+ Of Shakspeare’s names I will afterwards speak at more length; 
they are curiously—often barbarously—much by Providence,—but as- 
suredly not without Shakspeare’s cunning purpose—mixed out of the 
various traditions he confusedly adopted, and languages which he im- 
perfectly knew. Three of the clearest in meaning have been already 
noticed. Desdemona, ‘‘ dSvadamovia,” ‘‘ miserable fortune,” is also plain 
enough. Othello is, I believe, ‘‘the careful; all the calamity of the 
tragedy arising from the single flaw and error in his magnificently col- 
lected strength. Ophelia, ‘‘serviceableness,” the true lost wife of 
Hamlet, is marked as having a Greek name by that of her brother, 
Laertes; and its signification is once exquisitely alluded to in that 
brother's last word of her, where her gentle preciousness is opposed to 
the uselessness of the churlish clergy—‘‘ A ministering angel shall my 
sister be, when thou liest howling.”” Hamlet is, I believe, connected in 
some way with ‘‘homely” the entire event of the tragedy turning on 
betrayal of home duty. Hermione (%pua), ‘‘ pillar-like,” (4 eldos tye 
Xpvojs *Adpodirns). Titania (tithvn), ‘‘the queen;” Benedict and 
Beatrice, ‘‘blessed and blessing ;” Valentine and Proteus, enduring 
(or strong), (valens), and changeful. Iago and Iachimo have evidently 


202 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


respectively the spirits of faithful and imaginative labour, 
opposed to rebellious, hurtful and slavish labour. Prospero 
(‘‘for hope ”), a true governor, is opposed to Sycorax, the 
mother of slavery, her name “‘ Swine-raven,” indicating at once 
brutality and deathfulness ; hence the line— 


‘* As wicked dew as e’er my mother brushed, with vaven’s feather,”—&e. 


For all these dreams of Shakespeare, as those of true and 
strong men must be, are “ davrdcpata Oeta, kal axial tay dv- 
twv””—divine phantasms, and shadows of things that are. We 
hardly tell our children, willingly, a fable with no purport in 
it ; yet we think God sends his best messengers only to sing 
fairy tales to us, fond and empty. The Tempest is just like a 
grotesque in a rich missal, “clasped where paynims pray.” 
Ariel is the spirit of generous and free-hearted service, in early 
stages of human society oppressed by ignorance and wild tyr- 
anny: venting groans as fast as mill-wheels strike ; in ship- 
wreck of states, dreadful ; so that “ all but mariners plunge in 
the brine, and quit the vessel, then all afire with me,” yet hav- 
ing in itself the will and sweetness of truest peace, whence 
that is especially called ‘ Ariel’s” song, “Come unto these 
yellow sands, and there, take hands,” ‘‘courtesied when you 
have, and kissed, the wild waves whist :” (mind, it is ‘‘ cor- 
tesia,” not “ curtsey,”) and read ‘‘ quiet” for ‘* whist,” if you 
want the full sense. Then you may indeed foot it featly, and 
sweet spirits bear the burden for you—with watch in the 
night, and callin early morning. The vis viva in elemental 
transformation follows—‘“ Full fathom five thy father lies, of 
his bones are coral made.” ‘Then, giving rest after labour, it 
“fetches dew from the still vext Bermodthes, and, with a 
charm joined to their suffered labour, leaves men asleep.” 
Snatching away the feast of the cruel, it seems to them as a 
harpy ; followed by the utterly vile, who cannot see it in any 
shape, but to whom it is the picture of nobody, it still gives 
shrill harmony to their false and mocking catch, ‘ Thought is 
the same root—probably the Spanish Iago, Jacob, ‘‘the supplarter,” 
Leonatus, and other such names, are interpreted, or played with, in the 


plays themselves. Jor the interpretation of Sycorax, and reference te 
her raven’s feather, I am indebted to Mr. John R. Wise. 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 208 


free ;” but leads them into briers and foul places, and at last 
hollas the hounds upon them. Minister of fate against the 
great criminal, it joins itself with the “incensed seas and 
shores ”—the sword that layeth at it cannot hold, and may 
“ with bemocked-at stabs as soon kill the still-closing waters, 
as diminish one dowle that is in its plume.” As the guide and 
aid of true love, it is always called by Prospero ‘fine ” (the 
French “ fine,” not the English), or ‘ delicate ”—another long 
note would be needed to explain all the meaning in this word. 
Lastly, its work done, and war, it resolves itself into the ele- 
ments. The intense significance of the last song, ‘‘ Where 
the bee sucks,” I will examine in its due place. 

The types of slavery in Caliban are more palpable, and need 
not be dwelt on now: though I will notice them also, sever- 
ally, in their proper places ;—the heart of his slavery is in his 
worship: “That’s a brave god, and bears celestial—liquor.” 
But, in illustration of the sense in which the Latin “ benig- 
nus” and “malignus” are to be coupled with Eleutheria and 
Douleia, note that Caliban’s torment is always the physical re- 
flection of his own nature — “cramps” and “ side stiches 
that shall pen thy breath up ; thou shalt be pinched, as thick 
as honeycombs:” the whole nature of slavery being one 
cramp and cretinous contraction. Fancy this of Ariel! You 
may fetter him, but you set no mark on him ; you may put him 
to hard work and far journey, but you cannot give him a cramp. 

135. I should dwell, even in these prefatory papers, at more 
length on this subject of slavery, had not all I would say been 
said already, in vain, (not, as I hope, ultimately in vain), by 
Carlyle, in the first of the Latter-day Pamphlets, which I com- 
mend to the reader’s gravest reading ; together with that as 
much neglected, and still more immediately needed, on model 
prisons, and with the great chapter on ‘ Permanence ” (fifth 
of the last section of ‘‘ Past and Present”), which sums what 
is known, and foreshadows, or rather forelights, all that is to 
be learned of National Discipline. I have only here farther to 
examine the nature of one world-wide and everlasting form of 
slavery, wholesome in use, as deadly in abuse ;—the service of 
the rich by the poor. 


204. MUNERA PULVERIS. 


CHAPTER VI. 
MASTERSHIP. 


136. As in all previous discussions of our subject, we must 
study the relation of the commanding rich to the obeying 
poor in its simplest elements, in order to reach its first prin- 
ciples. 

The simplest state of it, then, is this:* a wise and ‘provi- 
dent person works much, consumes little, and lays by a store ; 
an improvident person works little, consumes all his produce, 
and lays by no store. Accident interrupts the daily work, or 
renders it less productive ; the idle person must then starve, 
or be supported by the provident one, who, having him thus 
at his mercy, may either refuse to maintain him altogether, 
or, which will evidently be more to his own interest, say to 
him, ‘‘I will maintain you, indeed, but you shall now work 
hard, instead of indolently, and instead of being allowed to 
lay by what you save, as you might have done, had you re- 
mained independent, J will take all the surplus. You would 
not lay it up for yourself; it is wholly your own fault that 
has thrown you into my power, and I will force you to work, 
or starve ; yeé you shall have no profit of your work, only 
your daily bread for it; [and competition shall determine 
how much of that {].” This mode of treatment has now be- 


* In the present general examination, I concede so much to ordinary 
economists as to ignore all ¢nnocent poverty. I adapt my reasoning, for 
once, to the modern English practical mind, by assuming poverty to be 
always criminal; the conceivable exceptions we will examine after- 
wards, 

[+ I have no terms of English, and can find none in Greek nor Latin, 
nor in any other strong language known to me, contemptuous enough ta 
attach to the bestial idiotism of the modern theory that wages are to be 
measured by competition. ] 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 205 


come so universal that it is supposed to be the only natural— 
nay, the only possible one; and the market wages are calmly 
defined by economists as “the sum which will maintain the 
labeurer.” 

137. The power of the provident person to do this is only 
checked by the correlative power of some neighbour of simi- 
larly frugal habits, who says to the labourer—‘“ I will give you 
a little more than this other provident person : come and work 
for me.” 

The power of the provident over the improvident depends 
thus, primarily, on their relative numbers ; secondarily, on the 
modes of agreement of the adverse parties with each other. 
The accidental level of wages is a variable function of the num- 
ber of provident and idle persons in the world, of the enmity 
between them as classes, and of the agreement between those 
of the same class. Jt depends, from beginning to end, on moral 
conditions. 

138. Supposing the rich to be entirely selfish, 7¢ 7s always 
for their interest that the poor should be as numerous as they can 
employ, and restrain. For, granting that the entire population 
is no larger than the ground can easily maintain—that the 
classes are stringently divided—and that there is sense or 
strength of hand enough with the rich to secure obedience ; 
then, if nine-tenths of a nation are poor, the remaining tenth 
have the service of nine persons each ;* but, if eight-tenths 
are poor, only of four each ; if seven-tenths are poor, of two 
and a third each; if six-tenths are poor, of one and a half 
each ; and if five-tenths are poor, of only one each. But, prac- 
tically, if the rich strive always to obtain more power over the 
poor, instead of to raise them—and if, on the other hand, the 
poor become continually more vicious and numerous, through 
neglect and oppression,—though tbe range of the power of 


* Tsay nothing yet of the qaality of the servants, which, neverthe- 
less, is the gist of the business. Will you have Paul Veronese to paint 
your ceiling, or the plumber from over the way ? Both will work for 
the same money ; Paul, if anything, a little the cheaper of the two, if 
you keep him in good humour ; only you have to discern him first, which 
will need eyes. 


206 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


the rich increases, its tenure becomes less secure ; until, at last, 
the measure of iniquity being full, revolution, civil war, or the 
subjection of the state to a healthier or stronger one, closes 
the moral corruption, and industrial disease.* 

139. It is rarely, however, that things come to this extrem- 
ity. Kind persons among the rich, and wise among the poor, 
modify the connexion of the classes: the efforts made to raise 
and relieve on the one side, and the success of honest toil on 
the other, bind and blend the orders of society into the con- 
fused tissue of half-felt obligation, sullenly-rendered obedi- 
ence, and variously-directed, or mis-directed toil, which form 
the warp of daily life. But this great law rules all the wild 
design: that success (while society is guided by laws of com- 
petition) signifies always so much victory over your neighbour as 
to obtain the direction of his work, and to take the profits of 
it. This is the real source of all great riches. No man can 
become largely rich by his personal toil.t The work of his 
own hands, wisely directed, will indeed always maintain him- 
self and his family, and make fitting provision for his age. 
But it is only by the discovery of some method of taxing the la- 
bour of others that he can become opulent. Every increase of 
his capital enables him to extend this taxation more widely ; 
that is, to invest larger funds in the maintenance of labourers, 
—to direct, accordingly, vaster and yet vaster masses of la- 
bour, and to appropriate its profits. 

140. There is much confusion of idea on the subject of this 
appropriation. It is, of course, the interest of the employer 
to disguise it from the persons employed ; and, for his own 
comfort and complacency, he often desires no less to disguise 
it from himself. And it is matter of much doubt with me, 
how far the foul and foolish arguments used habitually on 
this subject are indeed the honest expression of foul and fool- 


[* I have not altered a syllable in these three paragraphs, 137, 138, 
139, on revision ; but have much italicised : the principles stated being 
as vital, as they are little known.] 

+ By his art he may ; but only when its produce, or the sight or hear- 
ing of it, becomes a subject of dispute, so as to enable the artist to tax 
the labour of multitudes highly, in exchange for his own, 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 207 


ish convictions ;—or rather (as I am sometimes forced to con- 
clude from the irritation with which they are advanced) are 
resolutely dishonest, wilful, and malicious sophisms, arranged 
so as to mask, to the last moment, the real laws of economy, 
and future duties of men. By taking a simple example, and 
working it thoroughly out, the subject may be rescued from 
all but such determined misrepresentation. 

141. Let us imagine a society of peasants, living on a river- 
shore, exposed to destructive inundation at somewhat extended 
intervals ; and that each peasant possesses of this good, but 
imperiled, ground, more than he needs to cultivate for im- 
mediate subsistence. We will assume farther (and with too 
great probability of justice), that the greater part of them in- 
dolently keep in tillage just as much land as supplies them 
with daily food ;—-that they leave their children idle, and take 
no precautions against the rise of the stream. But one of 
them, (we will say but one, for the sake of greater clearness) 
cultivates carefully all the ground of his estate; makes his 
children work hard and healthily ; uses his spare time and 
theirs in building a rampart against the river; and, at the 
end of some years, has in his storehouses large reserves of food 
and clothing,—in his stables a well-tended breed of cattle, 
and around his fields a wedge of wall against flood. 

The torrent rises at last—sweeps away the harvests, and 
half the cottages of the careless peasants, and leaves them 
destitute. They naturally come for help to the provident one, 
whose fields are unwasted, and whose granaries are full. He 
has the right to refuse it to them: no one disputes this right.* 
But he will probably not refuse it; it is not his interest to do 
so, even were he entirely selfish and cruel. The only ques- 
tion with him will be on what terms his aid is to be granted. 

142. Clearly, not on terms of mere charity. To maintain 
his neighbours in idleness would be not only his ruin, but 
theirs. He will require work from them, in exchange for 
their maintenance ; and, whether in kindness or cruelty, all 

[* Observe this ; the legal right to keep what you have worked for, 


and use it as you please, is the corner-stone of all economy: compare 
the end of Chap. IT. } 


208 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


the work they can give. Not now the three or four hours 
they were wont to spend on their own land, but the eight or 
ten hours they ought to have spent.* But how will he apply 
this labour? The men are now his slaves ;—nothing less, and 
nothing more. On pain of starvation, he can force them to 
work in the manner, and to the end, he chooses. And it is 
by his wisdom in this choice that the worthiness of his mas- 
tership is proved, or its unworthiness. ividently, he must 
first set them to bank out the water in some temporary way, 
and to get their ground cleansed and resown ; else, in any 
case, their continued maintenance will be impossible. That 
done, and while he has still to feed them, suppose he makes 
them raise a secure rampart for their own ground against all 
future flood, and rebuild their houses in safer places, with the 
best material they can find ; being allowed time out of their 
working hours to fetch such material from a distance. And 
for the food and clothing advanced, he takes security in land 
that as much shall be returned at a convenient period. 

143. We may conceive this security to be redeemed, and 
the debt paid at the end of a few years. ‘The prudent peas- 
ant las sustained no loss; but is no richer than he was, and 
has had all his trouble for nothing. But he has enriched his 
neighbours materially ; bettered their houses, secured their 
land, and rendered them, in worldly matters, equal to him- 
self. In all rational and final sense, he has been throughout 
their true Lord and King. 

144. We will next trace his probable line of conduct, pre- 
suming his object to be exclusively the increase of his own 
fortune. After roughly recovering and cleansing the ground, 
he allows the ruined peasantry only to build huts upon it, 
such as he thinks protective enough from the weather to 
keep them in working health. The rest of their time he oc- 
cupies, first in pulling down, and rebuilding on a magnificent 
scale, his own house, and in adding large dependencies to it. 
This done, in exchange for his continued supply of corn, he 


[* I should now put the time of necessary labour rather under than 
over the third of the day. | 


° 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 209 


buys as much of his neighbours’ land as he thinks he can 
superintend the management of; and makes the former 
owners securely embank and protect the ceded portion. By 
this arrangement, he leaves to a certain number of the peas- 
antry only as much ground as will just maintain them in their 
existing numbers ; as the population, increases, he takes the 
extra hands, who cannot be maintained on the narrowed es- 
tates, for his own servants; employs some to cultivate the 
ground he has bought, giving them of its produce merely 
enough for subsistence ; with the surplus, which, under his 
energetic and careful superintendence, will be large, he main- 
tains a train of servants for state, and a body of workmen, 
whom he educates in ornamental arts. He now can splen- 
didly decorate his house, lay out its grounds magnificently, 
and richly supply his table, and that of his household and ret- 
inue. And thus, without any abuse of right, we should find 
established all the phenomena of poverty and riches, which 
(it is supposed necessarily) accompany modern civilization. In 
one part of the district, we should have unhealthy land, mis- 
erable dwellings, and half-starved poor; in another, a well- 
ordered estate, well-fed servants, and refined conditions of 
highly educated and luxurious life. 

145. I have put the two cases in simplicity, and to some 
extremity. But though in more complex and qualified opera- 
tion, all the relations of society are but the expansion of these 
two typical sequences of conduct and result. I do not say, 
observe, that the first procedure is entirely recommendable ; 
or even entirely right; still less, that the second is wholly 
wrong. Servants, and artists, and splendour of habitation 
and retinue, have all their use, propriety, and office. But I 
am determined that the reader shall understand clearly what 
they cost; and see that the condition of having them is the 
subjection to us of a certain number of imprudent or unfort- 
unate persons (or, it may be, more fortunate than their mas- 
ters), over whose destinies we exercise a boundless control. 
** Riches” mean eternally and essentially this; and God 
send at last a time when those words of our best-reputed 
econoinist shall be true, and we sfall indeed “all know what 


21g. * MUNERA PULVERIS. 


it is to be rich ;”* that itis to be slave-master over farthest 
earth, and over all ways and thoughts of men. Every opera- 
tive you employ is your true servant: distant or near, sub- 
ject to your immediate orders, or ministering to your widely- 
communicated caprice,—for the pay he stipulates, or the price 
he tempts,—all are alike under this great dominion of the 
gold. The milliner who makes the dress is as much a ser- 
vant (more so, in that she uses more intelligence in the ser- 
vice) as the maid who puts it on; the carpenter who smooths 
the door, as the footman who opens it; the tradesmen who 
supply the table, as the labourers and sailors who supply the 
tradesmen. Why speak of these lower services? Painters 
and singers (whether of note or rhyme,) jesters and story- 
tellers, moralists, historians, priests,—so far as these, in any 
degree, paint, or sing, or tell their tale, or charm their charm, 
or “perform” their rite, for pay,—in so far, they are all 
slaves ; abject utterly, if the service be for pay only ; abject 
less and less in proportion to the degrees of love and of wis- 
dom which enter into their duty, or can enter into it, accord- 
ing as their function is to do the bjdding and the work of a 
manly people ;—or to amuse, tempt, and deceive, a childish 
one. 

146. There is always, in such amusement and temptation, 
to a certain extent, a government of the rich by the poor, as 
of the poor by the rich; but the latter is the prevailing and 
necessary one, and it consists, when it is honourable, in the 
collection of the profits of labour from those who would haye 
misused them, and the administration of those profits for the 
service either of the same persons in future, or of others ; and 
when it is dishonourable, as is more frequently the case in 
modern times, it consists in the collection of the profits of 
labour from those who would have rightly used them, and 
their appropriation to the service of the collector himself. 

147. The examination of these various modes of collection 
and use of riches will form the third branch of our future in- 
quiries ; but the key to the whole subject lies in the clear un- 
derstanding of the difference between selfish and unselfish 

[* See Preface to Unto this Last. ] 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 211 


expenditure. It is not easy, by any course of reasoning, te 
enforce this on the generally unwilling hearer ; yet the defini- 
tion of unselfish expenditure is brief and simple. Itis ex- 
penditure which, if you are a capitalist, does not pay you, but 
pays somebody else; and if you are a consumer, does not 
please you, but pleases somebody else. Take one special in- 
stance, in further illustration of the general type given above. 
I did not invent that type, but spoke of a real river, and of 
real peasantry, the languid and sickly race which inhabits, or 
haunts—for they are often more like spectres than living men 
—the thorny desolation of the banks of the Arve in Savoy. 
Some years ago, a society, formed at Geneva, offered to em- 
bank the river for the ground which would have been re- 
covered by the operation ; but the offer was refused by the 
(then Sardinian) government. The capitalists saw that this ex- 
penditure would have “paid” if the ground saved from the 
river was to be theirs. Butif, when the offer that had this 
aspect of profit was refused, they had nevertheless persisted 
in the plan, and merely taking security for the return of their 
outlay, lent the funds for the work, and thus saved a whole 
race of human souls from perishing in a pestiferous fen (as, I 
presume, some among them would, at personal risk, have 
dragged any one drowning creature out of the current of the 
stream, and not expected payment therefor), such expendi- 
ture would have precisely corresponded to the use of his 
power made, in the first instance, by our supposed richer 
peasant—it would have been the king’s, of grace, instead of 
the usurer’s, for gain. 

148. ‘Impossible, absurd, Utopian!” exclaim nine-tenths 
of the few readers whom these words may find. 

No, good reader, this is not Utopian: but I will tell you 
what would have seemed, if we had not seen it, Utopian on 
the side of evil instead of good; that ever men should have 
come to value their money so much morethan their lives, that if 
you call upon them to become soldiers, and take chance of a 
bullet through their heart, and of wife and children being left 
desolate, for their pride’s sake, they will do it gaily, without 
thinking twice ; but if you ask them, for their country’s sake, 


212 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


to spend a hundred pounds without security of getting back a 
hundred-and-five,* they will laugh in your face. 

149. Not but that also this game of life-giving and taking 
is, in the end, somewhat more costly than other forms of play 
might be. Rifle practice is, indeed, a not unhealthy pastime, 
and a feather on the top of the head is a pleasing appendage ; 
but while learning the stops and fingering of the sweet instru- 
ment, does no one ever calculate the cost of an overture? 
What melody does Tityrus meditate on his tenderly spiral 
pipe? The leaden seed of it, broad-cast, true conical ‘‘ Dents 
de Lion” seed—needing less allowance for the wind than is 
usual with that kind of herb—what crop are you likely to have 
of it? Suppose, instead of this volunteer marching and 
countermarching, you were to do a little volunteer ploughing 
and counter-ploughing? It is more difficult to do it straight : 
the dust of the earth, so disturbed, is more grateful than for 
merely rhythmic footsteps. Gulden cups, also, given for good 
ploughing, would be more suitable in colour: (ruby glass, for 
the wine which “ giveth his colour” on the ground, might be 
fitter for the rifle prize in ladies’ hands). Or, conceive a little 
volunteer exercise with the spade, other than such asis needed 


* T have not hitherto touched on the subject of interest of money ; it 
is too complex, and must be reserved for its proper place in the body of 
the work. The definition of interest (apart from compensation for risk) 
is, ‘‘the exponent of the comfort of accomplished labour, separated from 
its power ;” the power being what is lent: and the French economists 
who have maintained the entire illegality of interest are wrong ; yet by 
no means so curiously or wildly wrong as the English and French ones 
opposed to them, whose opinions have been collected by Dr. Whewell 
at page 41 of his Lectures ; it never seeming to occur to the mind of the 
compiler, any more than to the writers whom he quotes, that it is quite 
possible, and even (according to Jewish proverb) prudent, for men to 
hoard as ants and mice do, for use, not usury ; and lay by something 
for winter nights, in the expectation of rather sharing than lending the 
scrapings. My Savoyard squirrels would pass a pleasant time of it un- 
der the snow-laden pine-branches, if they always declined to economize 
because no one would pay them interest on nuts. 

[I leave this note as it stood: but, as I have above stated, should now 
side wholly with the French economists spoken of, in asserting the ab- 
solute illegality of interest. | 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 213 


for moat and breastwork, or even for the burial of the fruit of 
the leaden avena-seed, subject to the shrill Lemures’ criti- 
cism— 

Wer hat das Haus so schlecht gebauet ? 


If you were to embank Lincolnshire more stoutly against the 
sea? or strip the peat of Solway, or plant Plinlimmon moors 
with larch—then, in due season, some amateur reaping and 
threshing ? 

‘‘Nay, we reap and thresh by steam, in these advanced 
days.” 

I know, it, my wise and economical friends. The stout arms 
God gave you to win your bread by, you would fain shoot 
your neighbours, and God’s sweet singers with ;* then you 
invoke the fiends to your farm-service ; and— 


When young and old come forth to play 

On a sulphurous holiday, 

Tell how the darkling goblin sweat 

(His feast of cinders duly set), 

And, belching night, where breathed the morn, 
His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn 

That ten day-labourers could not end. 


150. Going back to the matter in hand, we will press the 
example closer. On a green knoll above that plain of the 


* Compare Chaucer’s feeling respecting birds (from Canace’s falcon, 
to the nightingale, singing, ‘‘ Domine, labia—”’ to the Lord of Love), 
with the usual modern British sentiments on this subject. Or even 
Cowley’s :— 


‘¢ What prince’s choir of music can excel 
That which within this shade does dwell, 
To which we nothing pay, or give, 
They, like all other poets, live 
Withont reward, or thanks for their obliging pains ! 
*Tis well if they become not prey.” 


Yes ; itis better than well ; particularly since the seed sown by the way- 
side has been protected by the peculiar appropriation of part of the church- 
rates in our country parishes. See the remonstrance from a ‘‘ Country 
Parson,” in The Times of June 4th (or 5th; the letter is dated Juna 


214. MUNERA PULVERIS. 


Arve, between Cluse and Bonneville, there was, in the year 
1860, a cottage, inhabited by a well-doing family—man and 
wife, three children, and the grandmother. I call it a cot- 
tage, but in truth, it was a large chimney on the ground, wide 
at the bottom, so that the family might live round the fire ; 
lighted by one small broken window, and entered by an un- 
closing door. The family, I say, was ‘‘ well-doing;” at least 
it was hopeful and cheerful; the wife healthy, the children, 
for Savoyards, pretty and active, but the husband threatened 
with decline, from exposure under the cliffs of the Mont Vergi 
by day, and to draughts between every plank of his chimney 
in the frosty nights. 

“Why could he not plaster the chinks?” asks ‘the prac- 
tical reader. For the same reason that your child cannot 
wash its face and hands till you have washed them many a day 
for it, and will not wash them when it can, till you force it. 

151. I passed this cottage often in my walks, had its win- 
dow and door mended ; sometimes mended also a little the 
meal of sour bread and broth, and generally got kind greeting 
and smile from the face of young or old; which greeting, 
this year, narrowed itself into the half-recognizing stare of 
the elder child, and the old woman’s tears ; for the father 
and mother were both dead,—one of sickness, the other of 
sorrow. It happened that I passed not alone, but with a 
companion, a practised English joiner, who, while these peo- 
ple were dying of cold, had been employed from six in the 
morning to six in the evening, for two months, in fitting, 
without nails, the panels of a single door in a large house in 
London. Three days of his work taken, at the right time, 
from fastening the oak panels with useless precision, and ap- 


ord,) 1862:—‘‘ TI have heard at a vestry meeting a good deal of higgling 
over a few shillings? outlay in cleaning the church; but I have never 
heard any dissatisfaction expressed on account of that part of the rate 
which is invested in 50 or 100 dozens of birds’ heads.” 

[If we could trace the innermost of all causes of modern war, I be- 
lieve it would be found, not in the avarice nor ambition of nations, but 
in the mere idleness of the upper classes. They have nothing to do 
but to teach the peasantry to kill each other. ] 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 215 


plied to fasten the larch timbers with decent strength, would 
have saved these Savoyards’ lives. He would have been main- 
tained equally ; (I suppose him equally paid for his work by the 
owner of the greater house, only the work not consumed self- 
ishly on his own walls;) and the two peasants, and eventually, 
probably their children, saved. 

152. There are, therefore,—let me finally enforce, and 
leave with the reader, this broad conclusion,—three things 
to be considered in employing any poor person. It is not 
enough to give him employment. You must employ him 
first to produce useful things ; secondly, of the several (sup- 
pose equally useful) things he can equally well produce, you 
must set him to make that which will cause him to lead the 
healthiest life ; lastly, of the things produced, it remains a 
question of wisdom and conscience how much you are to take 
yourself, and how much to leave to others. A large quantity, 
remember, unless you destroy it, must always be so left at 
one time or another ; the only questions you have to decide 
are, not what you will give, but when, and how, and to whom, 
you will give. The natural law of human life is, of course, 
that in youth a man shall labour and lay by store for his old 
age, and when age comes, shall use what he has laid by, 
gradually slackening his toil, and allowing himself more frank 
use of his store ; taking care always to leave himself as much 
as will surely suffice for him beyond any possible length of 
life. What he has gained, or by tranquil and unanxious toil 
continues to gain, more than is enough for his own need, he 
ought so to administer, while he yet lives, as to see the good 
of it again beginning, in other hands; for thus he has him- 
self the greatest sum of pleasure from it, and faithfully uses 
his sagacity in its control. Whereas most men, if appears, 
dislike the sight of their fortunes going out into service again, 
and say to themselves,—‘‘I can indeed nowise prevent this 
money from falling at last into the hands of others, nor hinder 
the good of it from becoming theirs, not mine; but at least 
let a merciful death save me from being a witness of their 
satisfaction ; and may God so far be gracious to me as to let 
no good come of any of this money of mine before my eyes.” 


216 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


153. Supposing this feeling unconquerable, the safest way 
of rationally indulging it would be for the capitalistat once 
to spend all his fortune on himself, which might actually, in 
many cases, be quite the rightest as well as the pleasantest 
thing to do, if he had just tastes and worthy passions. But, 
whether for himself only, or through the hands, and for the 
sake, of others also, the law of wise life is, that the maker of 
the money shall also be the spender of it, and spend it, ap- 
proximately, all, before he dies; so that his true ambition as 
an economist should be, to die, not as rich, but as poor, as 
possible,* calculating the ebb tide of possession in true and 
calm proportion to the ebb tide of life. Which law, checking 
the wing of accumulative desire in the mid-volley,} and lead- 
ing to peace of possession and fulness of fruition in old age, 
is also wholesome, in that by the freedom of gift, together 
with present help and counsel, it at once endears and dignifies 
age in the sight of youth, which then no longer strips the 
bodies of the dead, but receives the grace of the living. Its 
chief use would (or will be, for men are indeed capable of 
attaining to this much use of their reason), that some temper- 
ance and measure will be put to the acquisitiveness of com- 
merce.{ For as things stand, a man holds it his duty to be 


[* See the Lafe of Fenelon. ‘‘The labouring peasantry were at all 
times the objects of his tenderest care ; his palace at Cambray, with all 
his books and writings, being consumed by fire, he bore the misfortune 
with unrufiled calmness, and said it was better his palace should be 
burnt than the cottage of a poor peasant.”’ (These thoroughly good men 
always go too far, and lose their power over the mass.) He died ex- 
emplifying the mean he had always observed between prodigality and 
avarice, leaving neither debts nor money. | 

+ kad meviay jyyouuevous elvat wh Td Thy odolay éAdttw moreiy GAAG TH THY 
amAnorlay rAeiw. ‘* And thinking (wisely) that poverty consists not in 
making one’s possessions less, but one’s avarice more.’’—Jazrs, v. 8. 
Read the context, and compare. ‘‘ He who spends for all that is noble, 
and gains by nothing but what is just, will hardly be notably wealthy, 
or distressfully poor.’’— Laws, v. 42. 

¢{'The fury of modern trade arises chiefly out of the possibility of 
making sudden fortunes by largeness of transaction, and accident of 
discovery or contrivance. I have no doubt that the final interest of 
every nation is to check the action of these commercial lotteries ; and 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 217 


temperate in his food, and of his body, but for no duty to be 
temperate in his riches, and of his mind. He sees that he 
ougbt not to waste his youth and his flesh for luxury ; but he 
wili waste his age, and his soul, for money, and think he does 
no wrong, nor know the delirium tremens of the intellect for 
disease. But the law of life is, that aman should fix the sum 
he desires to make annually, as the food he desires to eat 
flaily ; and stay when he has reached the limit, refusing in- 
crease of business, and leaving it to others, so obtaining due 
freedom of time for better thoughts.* How the gluttony of 
business is punished, a bill of health for the principals of the 
richest city houses, issued annually, would show in a suffi- 
ciently impressive manner. 

154. I know, of course, that these statements will be re- 
ceived by the modern merchant as an active border rider of 
the sixteenth century would have heard of its being proper 
for men of the Marches to get their living by the spade, in- 
stead of the spur. But my business is only to state veracities 
and necessities ; I neither look for the acceptance of the one, 
nor hope for the nearness of the other. Near or distant, the 
day will assuredly come when the merchants of a state shall 
be its true ministers of exchange, its porters, in the double 
sense of carriers and gate-keepers, bringing all lands into 
frank and faithful communication, and knowing for their 
master of guild, Hermes the herald, instead of Mercury the 
gain-guarder. 

155. And now, finally, for immediate rule to all who will ac- 
cept it. 

The distress of any population means that they need food, 
house-room, clothes, and fuel. You can never, therefore, be 
wrong in employing any labourer to produce food, house- 
room, clothes, or fuel ; but you are always wrong if you em- 
ploy him to produce nothing, (for then some other labourer 


that all great accidental gains or losses should be national, —not individ- 
ual. But speculation absolute, unconnected with commercial effort, is 
an unmitigated evil in a «tate, and the root of countless evils beside. 

[* I desire in the strongest terms to reinforce all that is contained in 
this paragraph. | 


218 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


must be worked double time to feed him); and you are gen- 
erally wrong, at present, if you employ him (unless he can do 
nothing else) to produce works of art or luxuries; because 
modern art is mostly on a false basis, and modern luxury is 
criminally great.* 

156. The way to produce more food is mainly to bring in 
fresh ground, and increase facilities of carriage ;—to break 
rock, exchange earth, drain the moist, and water the dry, to 
mend roads, and build harbours of refuge. Taxation thus 
spent will annihilate taxation, but spent in war, it annihilates 
revenue. 

157. The way to produce house-room is to apply your force 
first to the humblest dwellings. When your brick-layers are 
out of employ, do not build splendid new streets, but better 
the old ones; send your paviours and slaters to the poorest 
villages, and see that your poor are healthily lodged, before 
you try your hand on stately architecture. You will find its 
stateliness rise better under the trowel afterwards ; and we do 


* It is especially necessary that the reader should keep his mind fixed 
on the methods of consumption and destruction, as the true sources of 
national poverty. Men are apt to call every exchange ‘‘ expenditure,”’ 
but it is only consumption which Is expenditure. A large number of 
the purchases made by the richer classes are mere forms of interchange 
of unused property, wholly without effect on national prosperity. It 
matters nothing to the state whether, if a china pipkin be rated as worth 
a hundred pounds, A has the pipkin and B the pounds, or A the pounds 
and B the pipkin. Butif the pipkin is pretty, and A or B breaks it, 
there is national loss, not otherwise. So again, when the loss has really 
taken place, no shifting of the shoulders that bear it will do away with 
the reality of it. There is an intensely ludicrous notion in the public 
mind respecting the abolishment of debt by denying it. When a debt 
is denied, the lender loses instead of the borrower, that is all; the loss 
is precisely, accurately, everlastingly the same. The Americans borrow 
money to spend in blowing uptheir own houses. They deny their debt, 
by one-third already [1863], gold being at fifty premium ; and they will 
probably deny it wholly. That merely means that the holders of the 
notes are to be the losers instead of the issuers. The quantity of loss 
is precisely equal, and irrevocable ; it is the quantity of human industry 
spent in effecting the explosion, plus the quantity of goods exploded. 
Honour only decides who shall pay the sum lost not whether it is to be 
paid or not. Paid it must be, and to the uttermost farthing. 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 219 


do not yet build so well that we need hasten to display our 
skill to future ages. Had the labour which has decorated the 
Houses of Parliament filled, instead, rents in walls and roofs 
throughout the county of Middlesex ; and our deputies met 
to talk within massive walls that would have needed no stucco 
for five hundred years,—the decoration might have been after- 
wards, and the talk now. And touching even our highly con- 
scientious church building, it may be well to remember that 
in the best days of church plans, their masons called them- 
selves ‘“logeurs du bon Dieu ;” and that since, according to 
the most trusted reports, God spends a good deal of His time 
in cottages as well as in churches, He might perhaps like to 
be a little better lodged there also. 

158. The way to get more clothes is—not, necessarily, to 
get more cotton. There were words written twenty years 
ago * which would have saved many of us some shivering, 
had they been minded in time. Shall we read them again ? 

“The Continental people, it would seem, are importing our 
machinery, beginning to spin cotton, and manufacture for 
themselves ; to cut us out of this market, and then out of 
that! Sad news, indeed; but irremediable. By no means 
the saddest news—the saddest news, is that we should find 
our national existence, as I sometimes hear it said, depend 
on selling manufactured cotton ata farthing an ell cheaper 
than any other people. A most narrow stand for a great na- 
tion to base itself on! A stand which, with all the Corn-law. 
abrogations conceivable, I do not think will be capable of en- 
during. 

‘My friends, suppose we quitted that stand ; suppose we 
came honestly down from it and said—‘ This is our minimum 
of cotton prices ; we care not, for the present, to make cotton 
any cheaper. Do you, if it seem so blessed to you, make cot- 
ton cheaper. Fill your lungs with cotton fur, your heart 


[* (Past and Present, Chap. IX. of Third Section.) Tothink that for 
these twenty—now twenty-six—years, this one voice of Carlyle’s has 
been the only faithful and useful utterance in all England, and has 


sounded through all these years in vain! See Mors Clavigera, Letter 
X.] 


2. MUNERA PULVERIS. 


with copperas fumes, with rage and mutiny; become ye the 
general gnomes of Europe, slaves of the lamp!’ I admire a 
nation which fancies it will die if it do not undersell all other 
nations to the end of the world. Brothers, we will cease to 
undersell them ; we will be content to equal-sell them ; to be 
happy selling equally with them! Ido not see the use of un- 
derselling them: cotton-cloth is already twopence a yard, or 
lower ; and yet bare backs were never more numerous among 
us. Let inventive men cease to spend their existence inces- 
santly contriving how cotton can be made cheaper ; and try 
to invent a little how cotton at its present cheapness could be 
somewhat justler divided among us. 

“Let inventive men consider—whether the secret of this 
universe does after all consist in making money. With a hell 
which means—‘ failing to make money,’ I do not think there 
is any heaven possible that would suit one well. In brief, all 
this Mammon gospel of supply-and-demand, competition, 
laissez faire, and devil take the hindmost (foremost, is it not, 
rather, Mr. Carlyle ?), ‘begins to be one of the shabbiest 
gospels ever preached.’ ” 

159. The way to produce more fuel * is first to make your 
coal mines safer, by sinking more shafts ; then set all your 
convicts to work in them, and if, as is to be hoped, you suc- 
ceed in diminishing the supply of that sort of labourer, con- 
sider what means there may be, first, of growing forest where 
its growth will improve climate ; secondly, of splintering the 
forests which now make continents of fruitful land pathless and 
poisonous, into fagots for fire ;—so gaining at once dominion 
icewards and sunwards. Your steam power has been given 
(you will find eventually) for work such as that: and not for 
excursion trains, to give the labourer a moment’s breath, at 
the peril of his breath for ever, from amidst the cities which 
it has crushed into masses of corruption. When you know 
how to build cities, and how to rule them, you will be able to 


[* We don’t want to produce more fuel just now, but much less ; and 
to use what we get for cooking and warming ourselves, instead of for 
running from place to place. } 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 221 


breathe in their streets, and the “ excursion ” will be the af- 
ternoon’s walk or game in the fields round them. 

160. ‘*‘ But nothing of this work will pay ?” 

No; no more than it pays to dust your rooms, or wash 
your doorsteps. It will pay; not at first in currency, but 
in that which is the end and the source of currency,—in 
life ; (and in currency richly afterwards). It will pay in that 
which is more than life,—in light, whose true price has not 
yet been reckoned in any currency, and yet into the image ot 
which, all wealth, one way or other, must be cast. For your 
riches must either be as the lightning, which, 


Begot but in a cloud, 
Though shining bright, and speaking loud, 
Whilst it begins, concludes its violent race ; 
And, where it gilds, it wounds the place ;— 


or else, as the lightning of the sacred sign, which shines 
from one part of the heaven to the other. There is no 
other choice ; you must either take dust for deity, spectre 
for possession, fettered dream for life, and for epitaph, this 
reversed verse of the great Hebrew hymn of economy (Psalm 
exii.) :—‘‘ He hath gathered together, he hath stripped the 
poor, his iniquity remaineth for ever :”—or else, having the sun 
of justice to shine on you, and the sincere substance of gooa 
in your possession, and the pure law and liberty of life within 
you, leave men to write this better legend over your grave :— 

‘He hath dispersed abroad. He hath given to the poor. 
His righteousness remaineth for ever.” 


APPENDICES. 


I wave brought together in these last pages a few notes, 
which were not properly to be incorporated with the text, 
and which, at the bottom of pages, checked the reader’s 
attention to the main argument. They contain, however, 
several statements to which I wish to be able to refer, or have 
already referred, in other of my books, so that I think right 
to preserve them. | 


—_— 


APPENDIX I—(p. 22.) 


Tue greatest of all economists are those most opposed to the 
doctrine of “laissez faire,” namely, the fortifying virtues, 
which the wisest men of all time have arranged under the 
general heads of Prudence, or Discretion (the spirit which 
discerns and adopts rightly) ; Justice (the spirit which rules 
and divides rightly) ; Fortitude (the spirit which persists and 
endures rightly) ; and Temperance (the spirit which stops 
and refuses rightly). These cardinal and sentinel virtues are 
not only the means of protecting and prolonging life itself, 
but they are the chief guards, or sources, of the material 
means of life, and the governing powers and princes of 
economy. Thus, precisely according to the number of just 
men in a nation, is their power of avoiding either intestine or 
foreign war. All disputes may be peaceably settled, if a suf- 
ficient number of persons have been trained to submit to the 
principles of justice, while the necessity for war is in direct 
ratio to the number of unjust persons who are incapable of 
determining a quarrel but by violence. Whether the injus- 
tice take the form of the desire of dominion, or of refusal to 
submit to it, or of lust of territory, or lust of money, or of 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 223 


mere irregular passion and wanton will, the result is economi- 
cally the same ;—loss of the quantity of power and life con- 
sumed in repressing the injustice, added to the material and 
moral destruction caused by the fact of war. The early civil 
wars of England, and the existing * war in America, are curi- 
ous examples—these under monarchical, this under republi- 
can, institutions—of the results on large masses of nations of 
the want of education in principles of justice. But the mere 
dread or distrust resulting from the want of the inner virtues 
of Faith and Charity prove often no less costly than war itself. 
The fear which France and England have of each other costs 
each nation about fifteen millions sterling annually, besides 
various paralyses of commerce ; that sum being spent in the 
manufacture of means of destruction instead of means of pro- 
duction, There is no more reason in the nature of things 
that France and England should be hostile to each other than 
that England and Scotland should be, or Lancashire and. 
Yorkshire ; and the reciprocal terrors of the opposite sides 
of the English Channel are neither more necessary, more eco- 
nomical, nor more virtuous, than the old riding and reiving 
on the opposite flanks of the Cheviots, or than England’s own 
weaving for herself of crowns of thorn, from the stems of her 
Red and White roses. 


APPENDIX IL— (p. 34.) 


Few passages of the book which at least some part of the na- 
tions at present most advanced in civilization accept as an ex- 
pression of final truth, have been more distorted than those 
bearing on Idolatry. For the idolatry there denounced is 
neither sculpture, nor veneration of sculpture. It is simply 
the substitution of an ‘ Hidolon,” phantasm, or imagination of 
Good, for that which is real and enduring ; from the Highest 
Living Good, which gives life, to the lowest material good 

[* Written in 1862. I little thought that when I next corrected my 


type, the ‘‘existing’’ war best illustrative of the sentence, would be 
between Frenchmen in the Elysian Fields of Paris. ] 


224 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


which ministers to it. The Creator, and the things created, 
which He is said to have “seen good” in creating, are in this 
their eternal goodness appointed always to be ‘ worshipped,” 
—i. e., to have goodness and worth ascribed to them from 
the heart ; and the sweep and range of idolatry extend to the 
rejection of any or all of these, “calling evil good, and good 
evil,— putting bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.”* For 
in that rejection and substitution we betray the first of all 
Loyalties, to the fixed Law of life, and with resolute opposite 
loyalty serve our own imagination of good, which is the law, 
not of the House, but of the Grave, (otherwise called the law 
of “mark missing,” which we translate “law of Sin”); these 
“‘two masters,” between whose services we have to choose, 
being otherwise distinguished as God and Mammon, which 
Mammon, though we narrowly take it as the power of money 
only, is in truth the great evil Spirit of false and fond desire, 
or ‘‘ Covetousness, which is Idolatry.” So that Ieconoclasm— 
image-breaking——is easy ; but an Idol cannot be broken—it 
must be forsaken; and this is not so easy, either to do, or 
persuade to doing. For men may readily be convinced of the 
weakness of an image ; but not of the emptiness of an imagi- 
nation. 


APPENDIX IIL—(p. 36.) 


I nave not attempted to support, by the authority of other 
writers, any of the statements made in these papers ; indeed, 
if such authorities were rightly collected, there would be no 
occasion for my writing at all. Even in the scattered pas- 
sages referring to this subject in three books of Carlyle’s— 
Sartor Resartus, Past and Present, and the Latter Day Pam- 
phlets,—all has been said that needs to be said, and far better 
than I shall ever say it again. But the habit of the public 
mind at present is to require everything to be uttered dif- 
fusely, loudly, and a hundred times over, before it will listen; 
and it has revolted against these papers of mine asif they con. 


* Compare the close of the Fourth Lecture in Aratra Pentelici. 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 225 


tained things daring and new, when there is not one assertion 
in them of which the truth has not been for ages known to 
the wisest, and proclaimed by the most eloquent of men. It 
would be [[had written will be ; but have now reached a time 
of life for which there is but one mood—the conditional,| a 
far greater pleasure to me hereafter, to collect their words 
than to add to mine; Horace’s clear rendering of the sub- 
stance of the passages in the text may be found room for at 
once, 

Si quis emat citharas, emptas comportet in unum 

Nee studio citharae, nec Musae deditus ulli ; 

Siscalpra et formas non sutor, nautica vela 

Aversus mercaturis, delirus et amens 

Undique dicatur merito. Qui discrepat istis 

Qui nummos aurumque recondit, nescius uti 

Compositis ; metuensque velut contingere sacrum ? 


[Which may be roughly thus translated :— 

« Were anybody to buy fiddles, and collect a number, be- 
ing in no wise given to fiddling, nor fond of music: or if, 
being no cobbler, he collected awls and lasts, or, having no 
mind for sea-adventure, bought sails, every one would call him 
a madman, and deservedly. But what difference is there be- 
tween such a man and one who lays by coins and gold, and 
does not know how to use, when he has got them?” ] 


With which it is perhaps desirable also to give Xenophon’s 
statement, it being clearer than any English one can be, owing 
to the power of the general Greek term for wealth, ‘ useable 
things.” 

[I have cut out the Greek because I can’t be troubled to 
correct the accents, and am always nervous about them ; here 
it is in English, as well as I can do it :— 

“This being so, it follows that things are only property to 
the man who knows how to use them ; as flutes, for instance, 
are property to the man who can pipe upon them respectably ; 
but to one who knows not how to pipe, they are no property, 
unless he can get rid of them advantageously. . . Forilf 
they are not sold, the flutes are no property (being service- 


226 ° MUNERA PULVERIS. 


able for nothing); but, sold, they become property. Ta 
which Socrates made answer,—‘ and only then if he knows 
how to sell them, for if he sell them to another man who can- 
not play on them, still they are no property.’ ”| 


APPENDIX IV.—(p. 39.) 


Tur reader is to include here in the idea of ‘* Government,” 
any branch of the Executive, or even any body of private per- 
sons, entrusted with the practical management of public in- 
terests unconnected directly with their own personal ones. 
In theoretical discussions of legislative interference with polit- 
ical economy, it is usually, and of course unnecessarily, as- 
sumed that Government must be always of that form and 
force in which we have been accustomed to see it ;—that its 
abuses can neyer be less, nor its wisdom greater, nor its pow- 
ers more numerous. But, practically, the custom in most 
civilized countries is, for every man to deprecate the interfer- 
ence of Government as long as things tell for his personal 
advantage, and to call for it when they cease to do so. The 
request of the Manchester Economists to be supplied with 
cotton by Government (the system of supply and demand 
having, for the time, fallen sorrowfully short of the expecta- 
tions of scientific persons from it), is an interesting case in 
point. It were to be wished that less wide and bitter suffer- 
ing, suffering, too, of the innocent, had been needed to force 
the nation, or some part of it, to ask itself why a body of 
men, already confessedly capable of managing matters both 
military and divine, should not be permitted, or even re- 
quested, at need, to provide in some wise for sustenance as 
well as for d-“erce; and secure, if it might be,—(and it 
might, I think, »ven the rather be),—purity of bodily, as well 
as of spiritual, aliment? Why, having made many roads for 
the passage of armies, may they not make a few for the con- 
veyance of food ; and after organizing, with applause, various 
schemes of theological instruction for the Public, organize, 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 227 


moreover, some methods of bodily nourishment for them? 
Or is the soul so much less trustworthy in its instincts than 
the stomach, that legislation is necessary for the one, but in- 
applicable to the other. 


APPENDIX V.—(p. 70.) 


I prpateD with myself whether to make the note on Homer 
longer by examining the typical meaning of the shipwreck of 
Ulysses, and his escape from Charybdis by help of her figtree ; 
but as I should have had to go on to the lovely myth of Leu- 
cothea’s veil, and did not care to spoil this by a hurried account 
of it, I left it for future examination ; and, three days after the 
paper was published, observed that the reviewers, with their 
customary helpfulness, were endeavouring to throw the whole 
subject back into confusion by dwelling on this single (as they 
imagined) oversight. I omitted also a note on the sense of 
the word Avypov, with respect to the pharmacy of Circe, and 
herb-fields of Helen, (compare its use in Odyssey, xvii., 473, 
&e.), which would farther have illustrated the nature of the 
Circean power. But, not to be led too far into the subtleties 
of these myths, observe respecting them all, that even in very 
simple parables, it is not always easy to attach indisputable 
meaning to every part of them. I recollect some years ago, 
throwing an assembly of learned persons who had met to de- 
light themselves with interpretations of the parable of the 
prodigal son, (interpretations which had up to that moment 
gone very smoothly,) into mute indignation, by inadvertently 
asking who the unprodigal son was, and what was to be learned 
by his example. The leading divine of the company, Mr. 
Molyneux, at last explained to me that the unprodigal son was 
a lay figure, put in for dramatic effect, to make the story pret- 
tier, and that no note was to be taken of him. Without, how- 
ever, admitting that Homer put in the last escape of Ulysses 
merely to make his story prettier, this is nevertheless true of 
nll Greek myths, that they have many opposite lights and 


228 MUNERA PULVERIS. 


shades ; they are as changeful as opal, and like opal, usually 
have one colour by refiected, and another by transmitted light. 
But they are true jewels for all that, and full of noble enchant. 
ment for those who can use them ; for those who cannot, I am 
content to repeat the words I wrote four years ago, in the ap- 
pendix to the Two Paths— 

‘“‘The entire purpose of a great thinker may be difficult to 
fathom, and we may be over and over again more or less mis- 
taken in guessing at his meaning; but the real, profound, 
nay, quite bottomless and unredeemable mistake, is the fool’s 
thought, that he had no meaning.” 


———— 


APPENDIX VI.—(p. 84.) 


Tue derivation of words is like that of rivers: there is one 
real source, usually small, unlikely, and difficult to find, far up 
among the hills; then, as the word flows on and comes into 
service, it takes in the force of other words from other sources, 
and becomes quite another word—often much more than one 
word, after the Junction—a word as it were of many waters, 
sometimes both sweet and bitter. Thus the whole force of 
our English “ charity ” depends on the guttural in “charis” 
getting confused with the c¢ of the Latin “carus ;” thencefor- 
ward throughout the middle ages, the two ideas ran on to- 
gether, and both got confused with St. Paul’s ayary, which 
expresses a different idea in all sorts of ways; our “charity” 
having not only brought in the entirely foreign sense of alms- 
giving, but lost the essential sense of contentment, and lost 
much more in getting too far away from the ‘‘charis” of the 
final Gospel benedictions. For truly it is fine Christianity we 
have come to, which, professing to expect the perpetual graca 
or charity of its Founder, has not itself grace or charity enough 
to hinder it from overreaching iis friends in sixpenny bargains ; 
and which, supplicating evening and morning the forgiveness 
of its own debts, goes forth at noon to take its fellow-servants 
by the throat, saying,—not merely ‘‘ Pay me that thou owest,” 
but ‘“ Pay me that thou owest me not.” 


MUNERA PULVERIS. 229 


It is true that we sometimes wear Ophelia’s rue with a dif- 
ference, and call it “ Herb o’ grace o’ Sundays,” taking conso« 
lation out of the offertory with—‘“‘ Look, what he layeth out, 
it shall be paid him again.” Comfortable words indeed, and 
good to set against the old royalty of Largesse— 


Whose moste joie was, I wis, 
When that she gave, and said, ‘‘ Have this.’’ 


[I am glad to end, for this time, with these lovely words of 
Chaucer. We have heard only too much lately of “ Indis- 
criminate charity,” with implied reproval, not of the Indiscrim- 
ination merely, but of the Charity also. We have partly suc- 
ceeded in enforcing on the minds of the poor the idea that 
it is disgraceful to receive ; and are likely, without much dif- 
ficulty, to succeed in persuading not a few of the rich that it 
is disgraceful to give. But the political economy of a great 
state makes both giving and receiving graceful; and the po- 
litical economy of true religion interprets the saying that “it 
is more blessed to give than to receive,” not as the promise of 
reward in another life for mortified selfishness in this, but as 
pledge of bestowal upon us of that sweet and better nature, 
which does not mortify itself in giving. | 


Brantwood, Coniston, 
5th October, 1871. 


THE END. 





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PRE-RAPHAELITISM 





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PREFACE. 


Eraut years ago, in the close of the first volume of “ Mod- 
ern Painters,” I ventured to give the following advice to the 
young artists of England :— 

“They should go to nature in all singleness of heart, and 
walk with her laboriously and trustingly, having no other 
thought but how best to penetrate her meaning ; rejecting 
nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing.” Advice 
which, whether bad or good, involved infinite labor and 
humiliation in the following it; and was therefore, for the 
most part, rejected. 

It has, however, at last been carried out, to the very letter, 
by a group of men who, for their reward, have been assailed 
with the most scurrilous abuse which I ever recollect seeing 
issue from the public press. 1 have, therefore, thought it due 
to them to contradict the directly faise statements which have 
been made respecting their works ; and to point out the kind 
of merit which, however deficient in some respects, those 
works possess beyond the possibility of dispute. 


Denmark Hill, 
Aug. 1851. 





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Ir may be proved, with much certainty, that God intends 
no man to live in this world without working: but it seems to 
me no less evident that He intends every man to be happy in 
his work, It is written, “in the sweat of thy brow,” but it 
was never written, “in the breaking of thine heart,” thou 
shalt eat bread; and I find that, as on the one hand, infinite 
misery is caused by idle people, who both fail in doing what 
was appointed for them to do, and set in motion various 
springs of mischief in matters in which they should have had 
no concern, so on the other hand, no small misery is caused 
by over-worked and unhappy people, in the dark views which 
they necessarily take up themselves, and force upon others, of 
work itself. Were it not so, I believe the fact of their being 
unhappy is in itself a violation of divine law, and a sign of 
some kind of folly or sin in their way of life. Now in order 
that people may be happy in their work, these three things 
are needed: They must be fit for it: They must not do too 
much of it: and they must have a sense of success in it—not 
a doubtful sense, such as needs some testimony of other peo- 
ple for its confirmation, but a sure sense, or rather knowledge, 
that so much work has been done well, and fruitfully done, 
whatever the world may say or think about it. So that in 
order that a man may be happy, it is necessary that he should 
not only be capable of his work, but a good judge of his 
work. | 

The first thing then that he has to do, if unhappily his 
parents or masters have not done it for him, is to find out 
what he is fit for. In which inquiry a man may be very safely 
guided by his likings, if he be not also euided by his pride. 


238 PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 


People usually reason in some such fashion as this: ‘I don’t 
seem quite fit for a head-manager in the firm of & Co., 
therefore, in all probability, Iam fit to be Chancellor of the 
Exchequer.” Whereas, they ought rather to reason thus: ‘I 
don’t seem quite fit to be head-manager in the firm of 
& Co., but I daresay I might do something in a small green- 
grocery business ; I used to be a good judge of peas ;” that 
is to say, always trying lower instead of trying higher, until 
they find bottom: once well set on the ground, a man may 
build up by degrees, safely, instead of disturbing every one 
in his neighborhood by perpetual catastrophes. But this kind 
of humility is rendered especially difficult in these days, by 
the contumely thrown on men in humble employments. The 
very removal of the massy bars which once separated one 
class of society from another, has rendered it tenfold more 
shameful in foolish people’s, i. e. in most people’s eyes, to re- 
main in the lower grades of it, than ever it was before. When 
aman born of an artisan was looked upon as an entirely dif- 
ferent species of animal from a man born of a noble, it made 
him no more uncomfortable or ashamed to remain that differ- 
ent species of animal, than it makes a horse ashamed to re- 
main a horse, and not to become a giraffe. But now that a 
man may make money, and rise in the world, and associate 
himself, unreproached, with people once far above him, not 
only is the natural discontentedness of humanity developed to 
an unheard-of extent, whatever a man’s position, but it be- 
comes a veritable shame to him to remain in the state he was 
born in, and everybody thinks it his duty to try to be a “ gen- 
tleman.” Persons who have any influence in the management 
of public institutions for charitable education know how com- 
mon this feeling has become. Hardly a day passes but they 
receive letters from mothers who want all their six or eight 
sons to go to college, and make the grand tour in the long 
vacation, and who think there is something wrong in the 
foundations of society, because this is not possible. Out of 
every ten letters of this kind, nine will allege, as the reason 
of the writers’ importunity, their desire to keep their families 
in such and such a ‘‘ station of life.” There is no real desire 








PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 239 


for the safety, the discipline, or the moral good of the chil- 
dren, only a panic horror of the inexpressibly pitiable calamity 
of their living a ledge or two lower on the molehill of the 
world—a calamity to be averted at any cost whatever, of strug- 
gle, anxiety, and shortening of life itself. I do not believe 
that any greater good could be achieved for the country, than 
the change in public feeling on this head, which might be 
brought about by a few benevolent men, undeniably in the 
class of “ gentlemen,” who would, on principle, enter into some 
of our commonest trades, and make them honorable; showing 
that it was possible for a man to retain his dignity, and re- 
main, in the best sense, a gentleman, though part of his time 
was every day occupied in manual labor, or even in serving 
customers over a counter. I do not in the least see why cour- 
tesy, and gravity, and sympathy with the feelings of others, 
and courage, and truth, and piety, and what else goes to make 
up a gentleman’s character, should not be found behind a 
counter as well as elsewhere, if they were demanded, or even 
hoped for, there. 

Let us suppose, then, that the man’s way of life and man- 
ner of work have been discreetly chosen ; then the next thing 
to be required is, that he do not over-work himself therein. I 
am not going to say anything here about the various errors in 
our systems of society and commerce, which appear (I am not 
sure if they ever do more than appear) to force us to over- 
work ourselves merely that we may live; nor about the still 
more fruitful cause of unhealthy toil—the incapability, in 
many men, of being content with the little that is indeed 
necessary to their happiness. I have only a word or two to 
say about one special cause of over-work—the ambitious 
desire of doing great or clever things, and the hope of accom- 
plishing them by immense efforts: hope as vain as it is per- 
nicious ; not only making men over-work themselves, but ren- 
dering all the work they do unwholesome to them. I say it 
is a vain hope, and let the reader be assured of this (itis a 
truth all-important to the best interests of humanity). No 
great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort; a great 
thing can only be done by a great man, and he does it without 


240 PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 


effort. Nothing is, at present, less understood by us than 
this—nothing is more necessary to be understood. Let me 
try to say it as clearly, and explain it as fully as I may. 

I have said no great iniellectual thing: for 1 do not mean 
the assertion to extend to things moral. On the contrary, it 
seems to me that just because we are intended, as long as we 
live, to be in a state of intense moral effort, we are not in- 
tended to be in intense physical or intellectual effort. Our 
full energies are to be given to the soul’s work—to the great 
fight with the Dragon—the taking the kingdom of heaven by 
force. But the body's work and head’s work are to be done 
quietly, and comparatively without effort. Neither limbs nor 
brain are ever to be strained to their utmost; that is not the 
way in which the greatest quantity of work is to be got out of 
them: they are never to be worked furiously, but with tran- 
quillity and constancy. We are to follow the plough from 
sunrise to sunset, but not to pull in race-boats at the twilight: 
we shall get no fruit of that kind of work, only disease of the 
heart. 

How many pangs would be spared to thousands, if this 
ereat truth and law were but once sincerely, humbly under- 
stood,—that if a great thing can be done at all, it can be done 
easily ; that, when it is needed to be done, there is perhaps 
ouly one man in the world who can do it; but he can do it 
without any trouble—without more trouble, that is, than it 
costs small people to do small things; nay, perhaps, with less. 
And yet what truth lies more openly on the surface of all 
human phenomena? Is not the evidence of Ease on the very 
front of all the greatest works in existence? Do they not say 
plainly to us, not, ‘‘ there has been a great effort here,” but, 
‘there has been a great power here”? Itis not the weari- 
ness of mortality, but the strength of divinity, which we have 
to recognise in all mighty things; and that is just what we 
now never recognise, but think that we are to do great things, 
by help of iron bars and perspiration :—alas! we shall do 
nothing that way but lose some pounds of our own weight. 

Yet, let me not be misunderstood, nor this great truth be 
supposed anywise resolvable into the favorite dogma of young 


PREH-RAPHAELITISM. 241 


men, thai they need not work if they have genius. The fact 
is, that a man of genius is always far more ready to work than 
other people, and gets so much more good from the work that 
he does, and is often so little conscious of the inherent divin- 
ity in himself, that he is very apt to ascribe all his capacity to 
his work, and to tell those who ask how he came to be what 
he is: “If I am anything, which I much doubt, I made myself 
so merely by labor.” This was Newton’s way of talking, and 
I suppose it would be the general tone of men whose genius 
had been devoted to the physical sciences. Genius in the 
Arts must commonly be more self-conscious, but in whatever 
field, it will always be distinguished by its perpetual, steady, 
well-directed, happy, and faithful labor in accumulating and 
disciplining its powers, as well as by its gigantic, incommuni- 
cable facility in exercising them. Therefore, literally, it is no 
man’s business whether he has genius or not: work he must, 
whatever he is, but quietly and steadily ; and the natural and 
unforced results of such work will be always the things that 
God meant him to do, and will be his best. No agonies nor 
heart-rendings will enable him to do any better. If he bea 
ereat man, they will be great things; if a small man, small 
things ; but always, if thus peacefully done, good and right ; 
always, if restlessly and ambitiously done, false, hollow, and 
despicable. | 

Then the third thing needed was, I said, that a man should 
be a good judge of his work ; and this chiefly that he may not 
be dependent upon popular opinion for the manner of doing 
it, but also that he may have the just encouragement of the 
sense of progress, and an honest consciousness of victory : 
how else can he become 


** That awful independent on to-morrow, 
Whose yesterdays look backwards with a smile.” 


I am persuaded that the real nourishment and help of such a 
feeling as this is nearly unknown to half the workmen of the 
present day. For whatever appearance of self-complacency 
there may be in their outward bearing, it is visible enough, 


242 PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 


by their feverish jealousy of each other, how little confidence 
they have in the sterling value of their several doings. Con- 
ceit may puff a man up, but never prop him up; and there is 
too visible distress and hopelessness in men’s aspects to admit 
of the supposition that they have any stable support of faith 
in themselves. 

I have stated these principles generally, because there is no 
branch of labor to which they do not apply : But there is one 
in which our ignorance or forgetfulness of them has caused 
an incalculable amount of suffering: and I would endeavor 
now to reconsider them with especial reference to it,—the 
branch of the Arts. 

In general, the men who are employed in the Arts have 
freely chosen their profession, and suppose themselves to have 
special faculty for it; yet, as a body, they are not happy men. 
For which this seems to me the reason, that they are expected, 
and themselves expect, to make their bread by being clever— 
not by steady or quiet work ; and are, therefore, for the most 
part, trying to be clever, and so living in an utterly false state 
of mind and action. 

This is the case, to the same extent, in no other profession 
or employment. A lawyer may indeed suspect that, unless 
he has more wit than those around him, he is not likely to 
advance in his profession ; but he will not be always thinking 
how he is to display his wit. He will generally understand, 
early in his career, that wit must be left to take care of itself, 
and that it is hard knowledge of law and vigorous examination 
and collation of the facts of every case entrusted to him, which 
his clients will mainly demand ; this it is which he has to be 
paid for; and this is healthy and measurable labor, payable 
by the hour. If he happen to have keen natural perception 
and quick wit, these will come into play in their due time and 
place, but he will not think of them as his chief power; and 
if he have them not, he may still hope that industry and con- 
scientiousness may enable him to rise in his profession without 
them. Again in the case of clergymen: that they are sorely 
tempted to display their eloquence or wit, none who know 
their own hearts will deny, but then they know this to be a 


PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 243 


temptation: they never would suppose that cleverness was all 
that was to be expected from them, or would sit down delib- 
erately to write a clever sermon: even the dullest or vainest 
of them would throw some veil over their vanity, and pretend 
to some profitableness of purpose in what they did. They 
would not openly ask of their hearers—Did you think my 
sermon ingenious, or my language poetical? They would 
early understand that they were not paid for being ingenious, 
nor called to be so, but to preach truth ; that if they happened 
to possess wit, eloquence, or originality, these would appear 
and be of service in due time, but were not to be continually 
sought after or exhibited: and if it should happen that they 
had them not, they might still be serviceable pastors without 
them. 

Not so with the unhappy artist. No one expects any honest 
or useful work of him; but every one expects him to be in- 
genious. Originality, dexterity, invention, imagination, every 
thing is asked of him except what alone is to be had for asking 
—honesty and sound work, and the due discharge of his 
function as a painter. What function? asks the reader in 
some surprise. He may well ask; for I suppose few painters 
have any idea what their function is, or even that they have 
any at all. 

And yet surely it is not so difficult to discover. The facul- 
ties, which when a man finds in himself, he resolves to be a 
painter, are, I suppose, intenseness of observation and facility 
of imitation. The man is created an observer and an imitator ; 
and his function is to convey knowledge to his fellow-men, of 
such things as cannot be taught otherwise than ocularly. For 
a long time this function remained a religious one: it was 
to impress upon the popular mind the reality of the objects of 
faith, and the truth of the histories of Scripture, by giving 
visible form to both. That function has now passed away, 
and none has as yet taken its place. The painter has no pro. 
fession, no purpose. He is an idler on the earth, chasing the 
shadows of his own fancies. 

But he was never meant to be this. The sudden and uni- 
versal Naturalism, or inclination to copy ordinary natural 


244 PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 


objects, which manifested itself among the painters of Europe, 
at the moment when the invention of printing superseded 
their legendary labors, was no false instinct. It was mis- 
understood and misapplied, but it came at the right time, and 
has maintained itself through all kinds of abuse ; presenting 
in the recent schools of landscape, perhaps only the first fruits 
of its power. That instinct was urging every painter in 
Europe at the same moment to his true duty—the faithful 
representation of ail objects of historical interest, or of natural 
beauty existent at the period; representations such as might 
at once aid the advance of the sciences, and keep faithful 
record of every monument of past ages which was likely 
to be swept away in the approaching eras of revolutionary 
change. 

The instinct came, as I said, exactly at the right moment ; 
and let the reader consider what amount and kind of general 
knowledge might by this time have been possessed by the 
nations of Europe, had their painters understood and obeyed 
it. Suppose that, after disciplining themselves so as to be 
able to draw, with unerring precision, each the particular 
kind of subject in which he most delighted, they had sepa- 
rated into two great armies of historians and naturalists ;— 
that the first had painted with absolute faithfulness every edi- 
fice, every city, every battle-field, every scene of the slightest 
historical interest, precisely and completely rendering their 
aspect at the time ; and that their companions, according to 
their several powers, had painted with like fidelity the plants 
and animals, the natural scenery, and the atmospheric phe- 
nomena of every country on the earth—suppose that a faith- 
ful and complete record were now in our museums of every 
building destroyed by war, or time, or innovation, during 
these last 200 years—suppose that each recess of every moun- 
tain chain of Europe had been penetrated, and its rocks 
drawn with such accuracy that the geologist’s diagram was no 
longer necessary—suppose that every tree of the forest had 
been drawn in its noblest aspect, every beast of the field in its 
savage life—that all these gatherings were already in our na- 
tional galleries, and that the painters of the present day were 


PRH-RAPHAELITISM. 245 


laboring, happily and earnestly, to multiply them, and put 
such means of knowledge more and more within reach of the 
common people—would not that be a more honorable life for 
them, than gaining precarious bread by ‘“‘ bright effects?” 
They think not, perhaps. They think it easy, and therefore 
contemptible, to be truthful; they have been taught so all 
their lives. Butit is not so, whoever taught it them. It is 
most difficult, and worthy of the greatest men’s greatest ef- 
fort, to render, as it should be rendered, the simplest of the 
natural features of the earth ; but also be it remembered, no 
man is confined to the simplest ; each may look out work for 
himself where he chooses, and it will be strange if he cannot 
find something hard enough for him. The excuse is, however, 
one of the lips only ; for every painter knows that when he 
draws back from the attempt to render nature as she is, it is 
oftener in cowardice than in disdain. 

I must leave the reader to pursue this subject for himself ; 
I have not space to suggest to him the tenth part of the ad- 
vantages which would follow, both to the painter from such 
an understanding of his mission, and to the whole people, in 
the results of his labor. Consider how the man _ himself 
would be elevated: how content he would become, how 
earnest, how full of all accurate and noble knowledge, how 
free from envy—knowing creation to be infinite, feeling at 
once the value of what he did, and yet the nothingness. Con- 
sider the advantage to the people ; the immeasurably larger 
interest given to art itself; the easy, pleasurable, and perfect 
knowledge conveyed by it, in every subject ; the far greater 
number of men who might be healthily and profitably occu- 
pied with it as a means of livelihood ; the useful direction of 
myriads of inferior talents, now left fading away in misery: 
Conceive all this, and then look around at our exhibitions, 
and behold the “ cattle pieces,” and “sea pieces,” and “ fruit 
pieces,” and “family pieces ;” the eternal brown cows in 
ditches, and white sails in squalls, and sliced lemons in sau- 
cers, and foolish faces in simpers ;—and try to feel what we 
are, and what we might have been. 

Take a single instance in one branch of archeology. Let 


246 PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 


those who are interested in the history of religion consider 
what a treasure we should now have possessed, if, instead of 
painting pots, and vegetables, and drunken peasantry, the 
most accurate painters of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
turies had been set to copy, line for line, the religious and 
domestic sculpture on the German, Flemish, and French ca- 
thedrals and castles ; and if every building destroyed in the 
French or in any other subsequent revolution, had thus been 
drawn in all its parts with the same precision with which 
Gerard Douw or Mieris paint basreliefs of Cupids. Consider, 
even now, what incalculable treasure is still left in ancient 
basreliefs, full of every kind of legendary interest, of subtle 
expression, of priceless evidence as to the character, feelings, 
habits, histories, of past generations, in neglected and shat- 
tered churches and domestic buildings, rapidly disappearing 
over the whole of Europe—treasure which, once lost, the labor 
of all men living cannot bring back again; and then look at 
the myriads of men, with skill enough, if they had but the 
commonest schooling, to record all this faithfully, who are 
making their bread by drawing dances of naked women from 
academy models, or idealities of chivalry fitted out with 
Wardour Street armor, or eternal scenes from Gil Blas, Don 
Quixote, and the Vicar of Wakefield, or mountain sceneries 
with young idiots of Londoners wearing Highland bonnets 
and brandishing rifles in the foregrounds. Do but think of 
these things in the breadth of their inexpressible imbecility, 
and then go and stand before that broken basrelief in the 
southern gate of Lincoln Cathedral, and see if there is no 
fibre of the heart in you that will break too. 

But is there to be no place left, it will be indignantly asked, 
for imagination and invention, for poetical power, or love of 
ideal beauty? Yes; the highest, the noblest place—that 
which these only can attain when they are all used in the 
cause, and with the aid of truth. Wherever imagination and 
sentiment are, they will either show themselves withont fore- 
ing, or, if capable of artificial development, the kind of train- 
ing which such a school of art would give them would be the 
best they could receive. The infinite absurdity and failure 


PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 247 


of our present training consists mainly in this, that we do not 
rank imagination and invention high enough, and suppose that 
they can be taught. Throughout every sentence that I ever 
have written, the reader will find the same rank attributed to 
these powers,—the rank of a purely divine gift, not to be 
attained, increased, or in any wise modified by teaching, only 
in various ways capable of being concealed or quenched. Un- 
derstand this thoroughly ; know once for all, that a poet on 
canvas is exactly the same species of creature as a poet in 
song, and nearly every error in our methods of teaching will 
be done away with. For who among us now thinks of bring- 
ing men up to be poets ?—of producing poets by any kind of 
general recipe or method of cultivation? Suppose even that 
we see in youth that which we hope may, in its development, 
become a power of this kind, should we instantly, supposing 
that we wanted to make a poet of him, and nothing else, for- 
bid him all quiet, steady, rational labor? Should we force 
him to perpetual spinning of new crudities out of his boyish 
brain, and set before him, as the only objects of his study, the 
laws of versification which criticism has supposed itself to dis- 
cover in the works of previous writers? Whatever gifts the 
boy had, would much be likely to come of them so treated ? 
unless, indeed, they were so great as to break through all 
such snares of falsehood and vanity, and build their own foun- 
dation in spite of us; whereas if, as in cases numbering mill- 
ions against units, the natural gifts were too weak to do this, 
could any thing come of such training but utter inanity and 
spuriousness of the whole man? But if we had sense, should 
we not rather restrain and bridle the first flame of invention 
in early youth, heaping material on it as one would on the 
first sparks and tongues of a fire which we desired to feed into 
greatness? Should we not educate the whole intellect into 
general strength, and all the affections into warmth and hon- 
esty, and look to heaven for the rest? This, I say, we should 
have sense enough to do, in order to produce a poet in 
words: but, it being required to produce a poet on canvas, 
what is our way of setting to work? We begin, in all proba- 
bility, by telling the youth of fifteen or sixteen, that Nature 


248 PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 


is full of faults, and that he is to improve her; but that Raph- 
ael is perfection, and that the more he copies Raphael the 
better ; that after much copying of Raphael, he is to try what 
he can do himself in a Raphaelesque, but yet original, man- 
ner: that is to say, he is to try to do something very clever, 
all out of his own head, but yet this clever something is to 
be properly subjected to Raphaelesque rules, is to have a 
principal light occupying one-seventh of its space, and a prin- 
ciple shadow occupying one-third of the same ; that no two 
people’s heads in the picture are to be turned the same way, 
and that all the personages represented are to possess ideal 
beauty of the highest order, which ideal beauty consists partly 
in a Greek outline of nose, partly in proportions expressible 
in decimal fractions between the lips and chin; but partly 
also in that degree of improvement which the youth of sixteen 
is to bestow upon God’s work in general. This I say is the 
kind of teaching which through various channels, Royal Acad- 
emy lecturings, press criticisms, public enthusiasm, and not 
least by solid weight of gold, we give to our young men. And 
we wonder we have no painters ! 

But we do worse than this. Within the last few years some 
sense of the real tendency of such teaching has appeared in 
some of our younger painters. It only could appear in the 
younger ones, our older men having become familiarised with 
the false system, or else having passed through it and forgotten 
it, not well knowing the degree of harm they had sustained. 
This sense appeared, among our youths, —increased,—matured 
into resolute action. Necessarily, to exist at all, it needed the 
support both of strong instincts and of considerable self-con- 
fidence, otherwise it must at once have been borne down by 
the weight of general authority and received canon law. Strong 
instincts are apt to make men strange, and rude; self-confi- 
dence, however well founded, to give much of what they do 
or say the appearance of impertinence. Look at the self-con- 
fidence of Wordsworth, stiffening every other sentence of his 
prefaces into defiance ; there is no more of it than was needed 
to enable him to do his work, yet it is not a little ungraceful 
here and there. Suppose this stubbornness and self-trust in 


PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 249 


a youth, laboring in an art of which the executive part is con- 
fessedly to be best learnt from masters, and we shall hardly 
wonder that much of his work has a certain awkwardness and 
stiffness in it, or that he should be regarded with disfavor by 
many, even the most’ temperate, of the judges trained in the 
system he was breaking through, and with utter contempt and 
reprobation by the envious and the dull. Consider, farther, 
that the particular system to be overthrown was, in the present 
case, one of which the main characteristic was the pursuit of 
beauty at the expense of manliness and truth; and it will 
seem likely, @ priori, that the men intended successfully to 
resist the influence of such a system should be endowed with 
little natural sense of beauty, and thus rendered dead to the 
temptation it presented. Summing up these conditions, there 
is surely little cause for surprise that pictures painted, in a 
temper of resistance, by exceedingly young men, of stubborn 
instincts and positive self-trust, and with little natural per- 
ception of beauty, should not be calculated, at the first glance, 
to win us from works enriched by plagiarism, polished by 
convention, invested with all the attractiveness of artificial 
grace, and recommended to our respect by established 
authority. 

We should, however, on the other hand, have anticipated, 
that in proportion to the strength of character required for 
the effort, and to the absence of distracting sentiments, 
whether respect for precedent, or affection for ideal beauty, 
would be the energy exhibited in the pursuit of the special 
objects which the youths proposed to themselves, and their 
success in attaining them. 

All this has actually been the case, but in a degree which 
it would have been impossible to anticipate. That two youths, 
of the respective ages of eighteen and twenty, should have 
conceived for themselves a totally independent and sincere 
method of study, and enthusiastically persevered in it against 
every kind of dissuasion and opposition, is strange enough ; 
that in the third or fourth year of their efforts they should 
have produced works in many parts not inferior to the best 
of Albert Durer, this is perhaps not less strange. But the 


250 PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 


loudness and universality of the howl which the common 
critics of the press have raised against them, the utter absence 
of all generous help or encouragement from those who can 
both measure their toil and appreciate their success, and the 
shrill, shallow laughter of those who can do neither the one 
nor the other,—these are strangest of all—unimaginable un- 
less they had been experienced. 

And as if these were not enough, private malice is at work 
against them, in its own small, slimy way. The very day after 
I had written my second letter to the Times in the defence of 
the Pre-Raphaelites, I received an anonymous letter respecting 
one of them, from some person apparently hardly capable of 
spelling, and about as vile a specimen of petty malignity as 
ever blotted paper. I think it well that the public should 
know this, and so get some insight into the sources of the 
spirit which is at work against these men—how first roused it 
is difficult to say, for one would hardly have thought that 
mere eccentricity in young artists could have excited an hos- 
tility so determined and so cruel ;—hostility which hesitated 
at’ no assertion, however impudent. That of the “‘ absence of 
perspective” was one of the most curious pieces of the hue 
and cry which began with the Times, and died away in feeble 
maundering in the Art Union ; I contradicted it in the Times 
—I here contradict it directly for the second time. There 
was not a single error in perspective in three out of the four 
pictures in question. But if otherwise, would it have been 
anything remarkable in them? I doubt, if with the exception 
of the pictures of David Roberts, there were one architectural 
drawing in perspective on the walls of the Academy ; I never 
met but with two men in my life who knew enough of per- 
spective to draw a Gothic arch in a retiring plane, so that its 
lateral dimensions and curvatures might be calculated to scale 
from the drawing. Our architects certainly do not, and it was 
but the other day that, talking to one of the most distinguished 
among them, the author of several most valuable works, I 
found he actually did not know how to draw a circle in per- 
spective. And in this state of general science our writers for 
the press tale it upon them to tell us, that the forest trees 


PRE-RAPHAEHLITISM. 251 


in Mr. Hunt’s Sylvia, and the bunches of lilies in Mr. Collins’s 
Convent Thoughts, are out of perspective.* 

It might not, I think, in such circumstances, have been un- 
graceful or unwise in the Academicians themselves to have 
defended their young pupils, at least by the contradiction of 
statements directly false respecting them,t and the direction 


* It was not a little curious, that in the very number of the Art Union 
which repeated this direct falsehood about the Pre-Raphaelite rejection 
of ‘‘linear perspective” (by-the-bye, the next time J. B. takes upon 
him to speak of any one connected with the Universities, he may as well 
first ascertain the difference between a Graduate and an Under-Grad- 
uate), the second plate given should have been of a picture of Boning- 
ton’s,—a professional landscape painter, observe,—for the want of aeriul 
perspective in which the Art Union itself was obliged to apologise, and 
in which the artist has committed nearly as many blunders in lénear per- 
spective as there are lines in the picture. 

+ These false statements may be reduced to three principal heads, and 
directly contradicted in succession. 

The first, the current fallacy of society as well as of the press, was, 
that the Pre-Raphaelites imitated the errors of early painters. 

A falsehood of this kind could not have obtained credence anywhere 
but in England, few English people, comparatively, having ever seen a 
picture of early Italian Masters. If they had, they would have known 
that the Pre-Raphaelite pictures are just as superior to the early Italian 
in skill of manipulation, power of drawing, and knowledge of effect, as 
inferior to them in grace of design ; and that in a word, there is not a 
shadow of resemblance between the two styles. The Pre-Raphaelites 
imitate no pictures: they paint from nature only. But they have op- 
posed themselves as a body to that kind of teaching above described, 
which only began after Raphael’s time: and they have opposed them- 
selves as sternly to the entire feeling of the Renaissance schools ; a feel- 
ing compounded of indolence, infidelity, sensuality, and shallow pride. 
Therefore they have called themselves Pre-Raphaelites. If they adhere 
to their principles, and paint nature as it is around them, with the help 
of modern science, with the earnestness of the men of the thirteenth 
and fourteenth centuries, they will, as I said, found a new and noble 
schoolin England. If their sympathies with the early artists lead them 
into medizvalism or Romanism, they will of course come to nothing. 
But I believe there is no danger of this, at least for the strongest among 
them. There may be some weak ones, whom the Tractarian heresies 
may touch; but if so, they will drop off like decayed branches from a 
strong stem. I hope all things from the school. 

The second falsehood was, that the Pre-Raphaelites did not draw 


252 PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 


of the mind and sight of the public to such real merit as they 
possess. If Sir Charles Hastlake, Mulready, Edwin and Charles 
Landseer, Cope, and Dyce would each of them simply state 
their own private opinion respecting their paintings, sign it, 
and publish it, I believe the act would be of more service to 
English art than any thing the Academy has done since it was 
founded. But as I cannot hope for this, I can only ask the 
public to give their pictures careful examination, and look at 
them at once with the indulgence and the respect which I 
have endeavored to show they deserve. 

Yet let me not be misunderstood. I have adduced them 
only as examples of the kind of study which I would desire to 
see substituted for that of our modern schools, and of sin- 
gular success in certain characters, finish of detail, and bril- 
liancy of color. What faculties, higher than imitative, may 
be in these men, I do’ not yet venture to say ; but I do say, 
that if they exist, such faculties will manifest themselves in 
due time all the more forcibly because they have received 
training so severe. 

For it is always to be remembered that no one mind is like 
another, either in its powers or perceptions; and while tho 
main principles of training must be the same for all, the result 
in each will be as various as the kinds of truth which each will 
apprehend ; therefore, also, the modes of effort, even in men 
whose inner principles and final aims are exactly the same. 
Suppose, for instance, two men, equally honest, equally indus- 
trious, equally impressed with a humble desire to render some 
part of what they saw in nature faithfully ; and, otherwise, 
trained in convictions such as I have above endeavored to in- 
duce. But one of them is quiet in temperament, has a feeble 
memory, no invention, and excessively keen sight. The other 
is impatient in temperament, has a memory which nothing 


well. This was asserted, and could have been asserted only by persons 
who had never looked at the pictures. 

The third falsehood was, that they had no system of light and shade, 
To which it may be simply replied that their system of light and shade 
is exactly the same as the Sun’s; which is, I believe, likely to outlast 
that of the Renaissance, however brilliant. 


PRE-RAPHAHLITISM. 253 


escapes, an invention which never rests, and is comparatively 
near-sighted. 

Set them both free in the same field in a mountain valley. 
One sees everything, small and large, with almost the same 
clearness ; mountains and grasshoppers alike; the leaves on 
the branches, the veins in the pebbles, the bubbles in the 
stream: but he can remember nothing, and invent nothing. 
Patiently he sets himself to his mighty task ; abandoning at 
once all thoughts of seizing transient effects, or giving general 
impressions of that which his eyes present to him in micro- 
scopical dissection, he chooses some small portion out of the 
infinite scene, and calculates with courage the number of 
weeks which must elapse before he can do justice to the in- 
tensity of his perceptions, or the fulness of matter in his 
subject. ) 

Meantime, the other has been watching the change of the 
clouds, and the march of the light along the mountain sides ; 
he beholds the entire scene in broad, soft masses of true gra- 
dation, and the very feebleness of his sight is in some sort an 
advantage to him, in making him more sensible of the aerial 
mystery of distance, and hiding from him the multitudes of 
circumstances which it would have been impossible for him to 
represent. But there is not one change in the casting of the 
jagged shadows along the hollows of the hills, but it is fixed 
on his mind for ever; not a flake of spray has broken from 
the sea of cloud about their bases, but he has watched it as it 
melts away, and could recall it to its lost place in heaven by 
the slightest effort of his thoughts. Not only so, but thou- 
sands and thousands of such images, of older scenes, remain 
congregated in his mind, each mingling in new associations 
with those now visibly passing before him, and these again 
confused with other images of his own ceaseless, sleepless 
imagination, flashing by in sudden troops. Fancy how his 
paper will be covered with stray symbols and blots, and un- 
decipherable short-hand :—as for his sitting down to “draw 
from Nature,” there was not one of the things which he 
wished to represent that stayed for so much as five seconds 
together: but none of them escaped, for all that: they are 


254 PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 


sealed up in that strange storehouse of his; he may take one 
of them out, perhaps, this day twenty years, and paint it in 
his dark room, far away. Now, observe, you may tell both of 
these men, when they are young, that they are to be honest, 
that they have an important function, and that they are not 
to care what Raphael did. This you may wholesomely im- 
press on them both. But fancy the exquisite absurdity of 
expecting either of them to possess any of the qualities of the 
other. 

I have supposed the feebleness of sight in the last, and of 
invention in the first painter, that the contrast between them 
might be more striking ; but, with very slight modification, 
both the characters are real. Grant to the first considerable 
inventive power, with exquisite sense of color ; and give to 
the second, in addition to all his other faculties, the eye of an 
eagle ; and the first is John Everett Millais, the second 
Joseph Mallard William Turner. 

They are among the few men who have defied all false 
teaching, and have, therefore, in great measure, done justice 
to the gifts with which they were entrusted. They stand at 
opposite poles, marking culminating points of art in both 
directions ; between them, or in various relations to them, we 
may class five or six more living artists who, in like manner, 
have done justice to their powers. I trust that I may be 
pardoned for naming them, in order that the reader may 
know how the strong innate genius in each has been inva- 
riably acccompanied with the same humility, earnestness, and 
industry in study. 

It is hardly necessary to point out the earnestness or humil- 
ity in the works of William Hunt; but it may be so to sug- 
gest the high value they possess as records of English rural 
life, and still life. Who is there who for a moment could 
contend with him in the unaffected, yet humorous truth with 
which he has painted our peasant children? Who is there 
who does not sympathize with him in the simple love with 
which he dwells on the brightness and bloom of our summer 
fruit and flowers? And yet there is something to be regretted 
concerning him: why should he be allowed continually te 


PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 255 


paint the same bunches of hot-house grapes, and supply to 
the Water Color Society a succession of pineapples with the 
regularity of a Covent Garden fruiterer? He has of late dis- 
covered that primrose banks are lovely; but there are 
other things grow wild besides primroses: what undreamt-of 
loveliness might he not bring back to us, if he would lose 
himself for a summer in Highland foregrounds; if he 
would paint the heather as it grows, and the foxglove and the 
harebell as they nestle in the clefts of the rocks, and the 
mosses and bright lichens of the rocks themselves. And 
then, cross to the Jura, and bring back a piece of Jura pasture 
in spring; with the gentians in their earliest blue, and the 
soldanelle beside the fading snow! And return again, and 
paint a gray wall of Alpine crag, with budding roses crown- 
ing it like a wreath of rubies. That is what he was meant to 
do in this world ; not to paint bouquets in china vases. 

I have in various other places expressed my sincere respect 
for the works of Samuel Prout: his shortness of sight has 
necessarily prevented their possessing delicacy of finish or 
fulness of minor detail ; but I think that those of no other 
living artist furnish an example so striking of innate and 
special instinct, sent to do a particular work at the exact and 
only period when it was possible. At the instant when peace 
had been established all over Europe, but when neither 
national character nor national architecture had as yet been 
seriously changed by promiscuous intercourse or modern 
“improvement ;” when, however, nearly every ancient and 
beautiful building had been long left in a state of compara- 
tive neglect, so that its aspect of partial ruinousness, and of 
separation from recent active life, gave to every edifice a 
peculiar interest—half sorrowful, half sublime ;—at that mo- 
ment Prout was trained among the rough rocks and simple 
cottages of Cornwall, until his eye was accustomed to follow 
with delight the rents and breaks, and irregularities which, 
to another man, would have been offensive ; and then, gifted 
with infinite readiness in composition, but also with infinite 
affection for the kind of subjects he had to portray, he was 
sent to preserve, in an almost innumerable series of drawings, 


256 RE-RAPHAELITISM. 


every one made on the spot, the aspect borne, at the beginning 
of the nineteenth century, by cities which, in a few years more, 
rekindled wars, or unexpected prosperities, were to ravage, or 
renovate, into nothingness. 

It seems strange to pass from Prout to John Lewis; but 
there is this fellowship between them, that both seem to have 
been intended to appreciate the characters of foreign coun- 
tries more than of their own—nay, to have been born in Eng- 
land chiefly that the excitement of strangeness might enhance 
to them the interest of the scenes they had to represent. I 
believe John Lewis to have done more entire justice to all 
his powers (and they are magnificent ones) than any other 
man amongst us. His mission was evidently to portray the 
comparatively animal life of the southern and eastern families 
of mankind. or this he was prepared in a somewhat singu- 
lar way—by being led to study, and endowed with altogether 
peculiar apprehension of, the most sublime characters of ani- 
mals themselves. Rubens, Rembrandt, Snyders, Tintoret, 
and Titian, have all, in various ways, drawn wild beasts mag- 
nificently ; but they have in some sort humanized or demon- 
ized them, making them either ravenous fiends or educated 
beasts, that would draw cars, and had respect for hermits. 
The sullen isolation of the brutal nature; the dignity and 
quietness of the mighty limbs; the shaggy mountainous 
power, mingled with grace, as of a flowing stream; the 
stealthy restraint of strength and wrath in every soundless 
motion of the gigantic frame; all this seems never to haye 
been seen, much less drawn, until Lewis drew and himself 
engraved a series of animal subjects, now many years ago. 
Since then, he has devoted himself to the portraiture of those 
European and Asiatic races, among whom the refinements of 
civilization exist without its laws or its energies, and in whom 
the fierceness, indolence, and subtlety of animal nature are 
associated with brilliant imagination and strong affections. 
To this task he has brought not only intense perception of 
the kind of character, but powers of artistical composition 
like those of the great Venetians, displaying, at the same 
time, a refinement of drawing almost miraculous, and appre 


PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 257 


ciable only, as the minutize of nature itself are appreciable, 
by the help of the microscope. ‘The value, therefore, of his 
works, as records of the aspect of the scenery and inhabitants 
of the south of Spain and of the Hast, in the earlier part of 
the nineteenth century, is quite above all estimate. 

I hardly know how to speak of Mulready: in delicacy and 
completion of drawing, and splendor of color, he takes place 
beside John Lewis and the pre-Raphaelites; but he has, 
throughout his career, displayed no definiteness in choice of 
subject. He must be named among the painters who have 
studied with industry, and have made themselves great by 
doing so; but having obtained a consummate method of ex- 
ecution, he has thrown it away on subjects either altogether. 
uninteresting, or above his powers, or unfit for pictorial repre- 
sentation. ‘The Cherry Woman,” exhibited in 1850, may be 
named as an example of the first kind; the “Burchell and 
Sophia” of the second (the character of Sir Wilham Thorn- 
hill being utterly missed) ; the “Seven Ages” of the third ; 
for this subject cannot be painted. In the written passage, 
the thoughts are progressive and connected ; in the picture 
they must be co-existent, and yet separate; nor can all the 
characters of the ages be rendered in painting at all. One 
may represent the soldier at the cannon’s mouth, but one can- 
not paint the “bubble reputation” which he seeks. Maul- 
ready, therefore, while he has always produced exquisite 
pieces of painting, has failed in doing anything which can be 
of true or extensive use. He has, indeed, understood how to 
discipline his genius, but never how to direct it. 

Edwin Landseer is the last painter but one whom I shall 
name: I need not point out to any one acquainted with his 
earlier works, the labor, or watchfulness of nature which they 
involve, nor need I do more than allude to the peculiar facul- 
ties of his mind. It will at once be granted that the highest 
merits of his pictures are throughout found in those parts of 
them which are least like what had before been accomplished ; 
and that it was not by the study of Raphael that he attained 
his eminent success, but by a healthy love of Scotch terriers. 

None of these painters, however, it will be answered, afford 


258 PRE-RAPITAEHLITISM. 


examples of the rise of the highest imaginative power out of 
close study of matters of fact. Be it remembered, however, 
that the imaginative power, in its magnificence, is not to be 
found every day. Lewis has it in no mean degree ; but we 
cannot hope to find it at its highest more than once in an age. 
We have had it once, and must be content. 

Towards the close of the last century, among the various 
drawings executed, according to the quiet manner of the time, 
in greyish blue, with brown foregrounds, some began to be 
noticed as exhibiting rather more than ordinary diligence and 
delicacy, signed W. Turner.* There was nothing, however, 
in them at all indicative of genius, or even of more than or- 
dinary talent, unless in some of the subjects a large percep- 
tion of space, and excessive clearness and decision in the ar- 
rangement of masses. Gradually and cautiously the blues 
became mingled with delicate green, and then with gold ; the 
browns in the foreground became first more positive, and 
then were slightly mingled with other local colors ; while the 
touch, which had at first been heavy and broken, like that of 
the ordinary drawing masters of the time, grew more and 
more refined and expressive, until it lost itself in a method of 
execution often too delicate for the eye to follow, rendering, 
with a precision before unexampled, both the texture and the 
form of every object. The style may be considered as per- 
fectly formed about the year 1800, and it remained unchanged 
for twenty years. 

During that: period the painter had attempted, and with 
more or less success had rendered, every order of landscape 
subject, but always on the same principle, subduing the colors 
of nature into a harmony of which the key-notes are greyish 
ereen and brown; pure blues and delicate golden yellows 
being admitted in small quantity, as the lowest and highest 
limits of shade and light : and bright local colors in extremely 
small quantity in figures or other minor accessories. 

Pictures executed on such a system are not, properly speak- 


*He did not use his full signature, J. M. W., until about the year 
1800. 


PRE-RAPHAELITIiSM. 259 


ing, works in color at all ; they are studies of light and shade, 
in which both the shade and the distance are rendered in the 
general hue which best expresses their attributes of coolness 
and transparency ; and the lights and the foreground are ex- 
ecuted in that which best expresses their warmth and solidity. 
This advantage may just as well be taken as not, in studies of 
light and shadow to be executed with the hand: but the uso 
of two, three, or four colors, always in the same relations and 
places, does not in the least constitute the work a study of 
color, any more than the brown engravings of the Liber Stu- 
diorum ; nor would the idea of color be in general more pre- 
sent to the artist’s mind, when he was at work on one of these 
drawings, than when he was using pure brown in the mezzo- 
tint engraving. But the idea of space, warmth, and freshness 
being not successfully expressible in a single tint, and perfectly 
expressible by the admission of three or four, he allows him- 
self this advantage when it is possible, without in the least 
embarrassing himself with the actual color of the objects to 
be represented. A stone in the fore ground might in nature 
have been cold grey, but it will be drawn nevertheless of a 
rich brown, because it is in the foreground ; a hill in the dis- 
tance might in nature be purple with heath, or golden with 
furze ; but it will be drawn nevertheless of a cool grey, because 
it is in the distance. 

This at least was the general theory,—carried out with 
great severity in many, both of the drawings and pictures ex- 
-ecuted by him during the period : in others more or less 
modified by the cautious introduction of color, as the painter 
felt his liberty increasing ; for the system was evidently never 
considered as final, or as anything more thana means of prog- 
ress: the conventional, easily manageable color, was visibly 
adopted, only that his mind might be at perfect liberty to ad- 
dress itself to the acquirement of the first and most necessary 
knowledge in all art—that of form. But as form, in landscape, 
implies vast bulk and space, the use of the tints which enabled 
him best to express them, was actually auxiliary to the mere 
drawing; and, therefore, not only permissible, but even neces- 
sary, while more brilliant or varied tints were never indulged 


260 PRE-RAPHAEULITISM. 


in, except when they might be introduced without the slight. 
est danger of diverting his mind for an instant from his prin- 
cipal object. And, therefore, it will be generally found in the 
works of this period, that exactly in proportion to the impor- 
tance and general toil of the composition, is the severity of 
the tint ; and that the play of color begins to show itself first 
in slight and small drawings, where he felt that he could easily 
secure all that he wanted in form. 

Thus the ‘Crossing the Brook,” and such other elaborate 
and large compositions, are actually painted in nothing but 
erey, brown, and blue, with a point or two of severe local 
color in the figures ; but in the minor drawings, tender pas- 
sages of complicated color occur not unfrequently in easy 
places ; and even before the year 1800 he begins to introduce 
it with evident joyfulness and longing in his rude and simple 
studies, just as a child, if it could be supposed to govern itself 
by a fully developed intellect, would cautiously, but with infi- 
nite pleasure, add now and then a tiny dish of fruit or other 
dangerous luxury to the simple order of its daily fare. Thus, 
in the foregrounds of his most severe drawings, we not unfre- 
quently find him indulging in the luxury of a peacock ; and it 
is impossible to express the joyfulness with which he seems to 
design its graceful form, and deepen with soft pencilling the 
bloom of its blue, after he has worked through the stern detail 
of his almost colorless drawing. A rainbow is another of his 
most frequently permitted indulgences ; and we find him very 
early allowing the edges of his evening clouds to be touched 
with soft rose-color or gold ; while, whenever the hues of nat- 
ure in anywise fall into his system, and can be caught with- 
out a dangerous departure from it, he instantly throws his 
whole soul into the faithful rendering of them. Thus the 
usual brown tones of his foreground become warmed into 
sudden vigor, and are varied and enhanced with indescribable 
delight, when he finds himself by the shore of a moorland 
stream, where they truly express the stain of its golden rocks, 
and the darkness of its clear, Cairngorm-like pools, and the 
usual serenity of his aerial blue is enriched into the softness 
and depth of the sapphire, when it can deepen the distant 


PRHE-RAPHA ELITISM. 261 


slumber of some Highland lake, or temper the gloomy shad- 
ows of the evening upon its hills. 

The system of his color being thus simplified, he could ad- 
dress all the strength of his mind to the accumulation of facts 
of form ; his choice of subject, and his methods of treatment, 
are therefore as various as his color is simple ; and it is not a 
little difficult to give the reader who is unacquainted with his 
works, an idea either of their infinitude of aims, on the one 
hand, or of the kind of feeling which prevades them all, on 
the other. No subject was too low or too high for him; we 
find him one day hard at work on a cock and hen, with their 
family of chickens in a farm-yard ; and bringing all the refine- 
ment of his execution into play to express the texture of the 
plumage ; next day, he is drawing the Dragon of Colchis. One 
hour he is much interested in a gust of wind blowing away an 
old woman’s cap ; the next he is painting the fifth plague of 
Egypt. Every landscape painter before him had acquired 
distinction by confining his efforts to one class of subject. 
Hobbima painted oaks; Ruysdael, waterfalls and copses ; 
Cuyp, river or meadow scenes in quiet afternoons ; Salvator 
and Poussin, such kind of mountain scenery as people could 
conceive, who lived in towns in the seventeenth century. But 
I am well persuaded that if all the works of Turner, up to the 
year 1820, were divided into classes (as he has himself divided 
them in the Liber Studiorum), no preponderance could be as- 
signed to one class over another. There is architecture, in- 
cluding a large number of formal ‘‘ gentlemen’s seats,” I sup- 
pose drawings commissioned by the owners; then lowland 
pastoral scenery of every kind, including nearly all farming 
operations,—ploughing, harrowing, hedging and ditching, 
felling trees, sheep-washing, and I know not what else; then 
all kinds of town life—court-yards of inns, starting of mail 
coaches, interiors of shops, house-buildings, fairs, elections, 
&ec.; then all kinds of inner domestic life—interiors of rooms, 
studies of costumes, of still life, and heraldry, including mul- 
titudes of symbolical vignettes ; then marine scenery of every 
kind, full of iocal incident ; every kind of boat and method of 
fishing for particular fish, being specifically drawn, round the 


262 PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 


whole coast of England ;—pilchard fishing at St. Ives, whiting 
fishing at Margate, herring at Loch Fyne ; and all kinds of 
shipping, including studies of every separate part of the ves- 
sels, and many marine battle-pieces, two in particular of Traf- 
algar, both of high importance,—one of the Victory after the 
battle, now in Greenwich Hospital ; another of the Death of 
Nelson, in his own gallery; then all kinds of mountain scenery, 
some idealised into compositions, others of definite localities ; 
together with classical compositions, Romes and Carthages 
and such others, by the myriad, with mythological, histori- 
eal, or allegorical figures,—nymphs, monsters, and spectres ; 
heroes and divinities.* 

What general feeling, it may be asked incredulously, can 
possibly pervade all this? This, the greatest of all feelings— 
an utter forgetfulness of self. Throughout the whole period 
with which we are at present concerned, Turner appears as a 
man of sympathy absolutely infinite—a sympathy so all-em- 
bracing, that I know nothing but that of Shakespeare com- 
parable with it. A soldier’s wife resting by the roadside is 
not beneath it; Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, watching the 
dead bodies of her sons, not above it. Nothing can possibly 
be so mean as that it will not interest his whole mind, and 
carry away his whole heart; nothing so great or solemn but 
that he can raise himself into harmony with it; and it is im- 
possible to prophesy of him at any moment, whether, the next, 
he will be in laughter or in tears. 

This is the root of the man’s greatness; and it follows as a 
matter of course that this sympathy must give him a subtle 
power of expression, even of the characters of mere material 
things, such as no other painter ever possessed. The man 
who can best feel the difference between rudeness and tender- 
ness in humanity, perceives also more difference between the 
branches of an oak and a willow than any one else would ; and, 
therefore, necessarily the most striking character of the draw- 
ings themselves is the speciality of whatever they represent— 
the thorough stiffness of what is stiff, and grace of what is 


* T shall give a catalogue raisonnée of all this in the third volume of 
** Modern Painters.” 


PRE-RAPHAELITISMN. 263 


eraceful, and vastness of what is vast ; but through and beyond 
all this, the condition of the mind of the painter himself is 
easily enough discoverable by comparison of a large number 
of the drawings. It is singularly serene and peaceful: in it- 
self quite passionless, though entering with ease into the ex- 
ternal passion which it contemplates. By the effort of its 
will it sympathises with tumult or distress, even in their ex- 
tremes, but there is no tumult, no sorrow in itself, only a 
chastened and exquisitely peaceful cheerfulness, deeply medi- 
tative ; touched without loss of its own perfect balance, by 
sadness on the one side, and stooping to playfulness upon the 
other. I shall never cease to regret the destruction, by fire, 
now several years ago, of a drawing which always seemed to 
me to be the perfect image of the painter’s mind at this 
period, —the drawing of Brignal Church near Rokeby, of 
which a feeble idea may still be gathered from the engraving 
(in the Yorkshire series). The spectator stands on the “ Brig- 
nal banks,” looking down into the glen at twilight; the sky 
is still full of soft rays, though the sun is gone; and the 
Greta glances brightly in the valley, singing its evening-sone ; 
two white clouds, following each other, move without wind 
through the hollows of the ravine, and others lie couched on 
the far away moorlands; every leaf of the woods is still in the 
delicate air; a boy’s kite, incapable of rising, has become en- 
tangled in their branches, he is climbing to recover it; and 
just behind it in the picture, almost indicated by it, the lowly 
church is seen in its secluded field between the rocks and the 
stream ; and around it the low churchyard wall, and the few 
white stones which mark the resting places of those who can 
climb the rocks no more, nor hear the river sing as it passes. 

There are many other existing drawings which indicate the 
same character of mind, though I think none so touching or 
so beautiful ; yet they are not, as I said above, more numerous 
than those which express his sympathy with sublimer or more 
active scenes ; but they are almost always marked by a ten- 
derness of execution, and have a look of being beloved in 
every part of them, which shows them to be the truest expres- 
sion of his own feelings. 


264 PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 


One other characteristic of his mind at this period remains 
to be noticed—its reverence for talent in others. Not the 
reverence which acts upon the practices of men as if they were 
the laws of nature, but that which is ready to appreciate the 
power, and receive the assistance, of every mind which has 
been previously employed in the same direction, so far as its 
teaching seems to be consistent with the great text-book of 
nature itself. Turner thus studied almost every preceding 
landscape painter, chiefly Claude, Poussin, Vandevelde, 
Loutherbourg, and Wilson. It was probably by the Sir 
George Beaumonts and other feeble conventionalists ‘of the 
period, that he was persuaded to devote his attention to the 
works of these men; and his having done so will be thought, 
a few scores of years hence, evidence of perhaps the greatest 
modesty ever shown by a man of original power. Modesty 
at once admirable and unfortunate, for the study of the works 
of Vandevelde and Claude was productive of unmixed mischief 
to him ; he spoiled many of lis marine pictures, as for instance 
Lord Ellesmere’s, by imitation of the former; and from the 
latter learned a false ideal, which confirmed by the notions of 
Greek art prevalent in London in the beginning of this cen- 
tury, has manifested itself in many vulgarities in his composi- 
tion pictures, vulgarities which may perhaps be best expressed 
by the general term ‘Twickenham Classicism,” as consisting 
principally in conceptions of ancient or of rural life such as 
have influenced the erection of most of our suburban villas. 
From Nicolo Poussin and Loutherbourg he seems to have de- 
rived advantage ; perhaps also from Wilson ; and much in his 
subsequent travels from far higher men, especially Tintoret 
and Paul Veronese. Ihave myself heard him speaking with 
singular delight of the putting in of the beech leaves in the 
upper right-hand corner of Titian’s Peter Martyr. I cannot in 
any of his works trace the slightest influence of Salvator ; and 
Tam not surprised at it, for though Salvator was a man of far 
higher powers than either Vandevelde or Claude, he was a 
wilful and gross caricaturist. Turner would condescend to be 
helped by fceble men, but could not be corrupted by false 
men. Besides, he had never himself seen classical life, and 


PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 265 


Claude was represented to him as competent authority for it. 
But he had seen mountains and torrents, and knew therefore 
that Salvator could not paint them. 

One of the most characteristic drawings of this period for- 
tunately bears a date, 1818, and brings us within two years 
of another dated drawing, no less characteristic of what I 
shall henceforward call Turner’s Second period. It is in the 
possession of Mr. Hawkesworth Fawkes of Farnley, one of 
Turner's earliest and truest friends ; and bears the inscription, 
unusually conspicuous, heaving itself up and down over the 
eminences of the foreground—‘ Passage or Mont Cenis. J. 
M. W. Turner, January 15th, 1820.” 

The scene is on the summit of the pass close to the hospice, 
or what seems to have been a hospice at that time,—I do not 
remember such at present,—a small square-built house, built 
as if partly for a fortress, with a detached flight of stone steps 
in front of it, and a kind of drawbridge to the door. This 
building, about 400 or 500 yards off, is seen in a dim, ashy 
grey against the light, which by help of a violent blast of 
mountain wind has broken through the depth of clouds which 
hangs upon the crags. There is no sky, properly so called, 
nothing but this roof of drifting cloud; but neither is there 
any weight of darkness—the high air is too thin for it,—all 
savage, howling, and luminous with cold, the massy bases of 
the granite hills jutting out here and there grimly through 
the snow wreaths. ‘There is a desolate-looking refuge on the 
left, with its number 16, marked on it in long ghastly figures, 
and the wind is drifting the snow off the roof and through its 
window in a frantic whirl; the near ground is all wan with 
half-thawed, half-trampled snow; a diligence in front, whose 
horses, unable to face the wind, have turned right round with 
fright, its passengers struggling to escape, jammed in the 
window ; a little farther on is another carriage off the road, 
some figures pushing at its wheels, and its driver at the horses’ 
heads, pulling and lashing with all his strength, his lifted arm 
stretched out against the light of the distance, though too far 
off for the whip to be seen. 

Now I am perfectly certain that any one thoroughly accus- 


266 PRE-RAPHAEHLITISM. 


tomed to the earlier works of the painter, and shown this 
picture for the first time, would be struck by two altogether 
new characters in it. 

The first, a seeming enjoyment of the excitement of the 
scene, totally different from the contemplative philosophy with 
which it would formerly have been regarded. Every incident 
of motion and of energy is siezed upon with indescribable 
delight, and every line of the composition animated with a 
force and fury which are now no longer the mere expression 
of a contemplated external truth, but have origin in some in- 
herent feeling in the painter’s mind. 

The second, that although the subject is one in itself almost 
incapable of color, and although, in order to increase the 
wildness of the impression, all brilliant local color has been 
refused even where it might easily have been introduced, as 
in the figures; yet in the low minor key which has been 
chosen, the melodies of color have been elaborated to the 
utmost possible pitch, so as to become a leading, instead of a 
subordinate, element in the composition ; the subdued warm 
hues of the granite promontories, the dull stone color of the 
walls of the buildings, clearly opposed, even in shade, to the 
grey of the snow wreaths heaped against them, and the faint 
greens and ghastly blues of the glacier ice, being all expressed 
with delicacies of transition utterly unexampled in any previ- 
ous drawings. 

These, accordingly, are the chief characteristics of the works 
of Turner’s second period, as distinguished from the first,—a 
new energy inherent in the mind of the painter, diminishing 
the repose and exalting the force and fire of his conceptions, 
and the presence of Color, as at least an essential, and often 
a principal, element of design. 

Not that it is impossible, or even unusual, to find drawings 
of serene subject, and perfectly quiet feeling, among the com- 
positions of this period ; but the repose is in them, just as the 
energy and tumult were in the earlier period, an external 
quality, which the painter images by an effort of the will: it 
is no longer a character inherent in himself. The ‘ Ulleswater,” 
in the England series, is one of those which are in most per- 


PREH-RAPHAELITISM. 267 


fect peace: in the ‘“ Cowes,” the silence is only broken by the 
dash of the boat's oars, and in the ‘‘Alnwieck” by a stag 
drinking ; but in at least nine drawings out of ten, either sky, 
water, or figures are in rapid motion, and the grandest draw- 
ings are almost always those which have even violent action 
in one or other, or in all: e. g. high force of Tees, Coventry, 
Lianthony, Salisbury, Llanberis, and such others. 

The color is, however, a more absolute distinction ; and we 
must return to Mr. Fawkes’s collection in order to see how 
the change in it was effected. That suchachange would take 
place at one time or other was of course to be securely antici- 
pated, the conventional system of the first period being, as 
above stated, merely a means of Study. But the immediate 
cause was the journey of the year 1820. Asmight be guessed 
from the legend on the drawing above described, ‘‘ Passage 
of Mont Cenis, January 15th, 1820,” that drawing represents 
what happened on the day in question to the painter himself. 
He passed the Alps then in the winter of 1820 ; and either in 
the previous or subsequent summer, but on the same journey, 
he made a series of sketches on the Rhine, in body color, now 
in Mr. Fawkes’s collection. livery one of those sketches is 
the almost instantaneous record of an effect of color or atmo- 
sphere, taken strictly from nature, the drawing and the details 
of every subject being comparatively subordinate, and the 
color nearly as principal as the light and shade had been be- 
fore,—certainly the leading feature, though the light and 
shade are always exquisitely harmonized with it. And natu- 
rally, as the color becomes the leading object, those times of 
day are chosen in which it is most lovely ; and whereas before, 
at least five out of six of Turner’s drawings represented ordi- 
nary daylight, we now find his attention directed constantly 
to the evening: and, for the first time, we have those rosy 
lights upon the hills, those gorgeous falls of sun through 
flaming heavens, those solemn twilights, with the blue moon 
rising as the western sky grows dim, which have ever since 
been the themes of his mightiest thoughts. 

I have no doubt, that the <mmediate reason of this change 
was the impression made upon him by the colors of the con- 


268 PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 


tinental skies. When he first travelled on the Continent 
(1800), he was comparatively a young student; not yet able 
to draw form as he wanted, he was forced to give all his 
thoughts and strength to this primary object. But now he 
was free to receive other impressions ; the time was come for 
perfecting his art, and the first sunset which he saw on the 
Rhine taught him that all previous landscape art was vain 
and valueless, that in comparison with natural color, the 
things that had been called paintings were mere ink and 
charcoal, and that all precedent and all authority must be 
cast away at once, and trodden under foot. He cast them 
away: the memories of Vandevelde and Claude were at once 
weeded out of the great mind they had encumbered ; they 
and all the rubbish of the schools together with them ; the 
waves of the Rhine swept them away for ever; and a new 
dawn rose over the rocks of the Siebengebirge. 

There was another motive at work, which rendered the 
change still more complete. His fellow artists were already 
conscious enough of his superior power in drawing, and their 
best hope was, that he might not be able to color. They had 
begun to express this hope loudly enough for it to reach his 
ears. The engraver of one of his most important marine 
pictures told me, not long ago, that one day about the period 
in question, Turner came into his room to examine the 
progress of the plate, not having seen his own picture for 
several months. It was one of his dark early pictures, but in 
the foreground was a little piece of luxury, a pearly fish 
wrought into hues like those of an opal. He stood before the 
picture for some moments ; then laughed, and pointed joy- 
ously to the fish ;—‘‘ They say that Turner can’t color!” and 
turned away. 

Under the force of these various impulses the change was 
total. Hvery subject thenceforth was primarily conceived in 
color ; and no engraving ever gave the slightest idea of any 
drawing of this period. 

The artists who had any perception of the truth were in 
despair ; the Beaumontites, classicalists, and ‘‘ owl species ” 
in general, in as much indignation as their dulness was capa- 


PRE-RAPHAHLITIS&A. 269 


ble of. They had deliberately closed their eyes to all nature, 
and had gone on inquiring, ‘‘ Where do ycu put your brown 
tree?” A vast revelation was made to them at once, enough 
to have dazzled any one; but to them, light unendurable as 
incomprehensible. They “did to the moon complain,” in one 
vociferous, unanimous, continuous “Tu whoo.” Shrieking 
rose from all dark places at the same instant, just the same 
kind of shrieking that is now raised against the Pre-Raphael- 
ites. ‘Those glorious old Arabian Nights, how true they are! 
Mocking and whispering, and abuse loud and low by turns, 
from all the black stones beside the road, when one living soul 
is toiling up the hill to get the golden water. Mocking and 
whispering, that he may look back, and become a black stone 
like themselves. 

Turner looked not back, but he went on in such a temper 
as a strong man must be in, when he is forced to walk with 
his fingers in his ears. He retired into himself; he could 
look no longer for help, or counsel, or sympathy from any 
one ; and the spirit of defiance in which he was forced to 
labor led him sometimes into violences, from which the 
slightest expression of sympathy would have saved him. The 
new energy that was upon him, and the utter isolation into 
which he was driven, were both alike dangerous, and many 
drawings of the time show the evil effects of both ; some of 
them being hasty, wild, or experimental, and others little 
more than magnificent expressions of defiance of public 
opinion. 

But all have this noble virtue—they are in everything his 
own: there are no more reminiscences of dead masters, no 
more trials of skill in the manner of Claude or Poussin ; every 
faculty of his soul is fixed upon nature only, as he saw her, 
or as he remembered her. 

I have spoken above of his gigantic memory : it 1s espe- 
cially necessary to notice this, in order that we may understand 
the kind of grasp which a man of real imagination takes of 
all things that are once brought within his reach—grasp 
thenceforth not to be relaxed for ever. 

On looking over any catalogues of his works, or of par- 


270 PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 


ticular series of them, we shall notice the recurrence of the 
same subject two, three, or even many times. In any other 
artist this would be nothing remarkable. Probably most 
modern landscape painters multiply a favorite subject twenty, 
thirty, or sixty fold, putting the shadows and the clouds in 
different places, and ‘ inventing,” as they are pleased to eall 
it, anew “effect” every time. Butif we examine the suc- 
cessions of Turner’s subjects, we shall find them either the 
records of a succession of impressions actually perceived by 
him at some favorite locality, or else repetitions of one im- 
pression received in early youth, and again and again realised 
as his increasing powers enabled him to do better justice to 
it. In either case we shall find them records of seen facts ; 
never compositions in his room to fill up a favorite outline. 
For instance, every traveller, at least every traveller of 
thirty years’ standing, must love Calais, the place where he 
first felt himself in a strange world. Turner evidently loved 
it excessively. I have never catalogued his studies of Calais, 
but I remember, at this moment, five: there is first the ‘‘ Pas 
de Calais,” a very large oil painting, which is what he saw in 
broad daylight as he crossed over, when he got near the 
French side. It is a careful study of French fishing boats 
running for the shore before the wind, with the picturesque 
old city in the distance. ‘Then there is the ‘*Calais Harbor ” 
in the Liber Studiorum : that is what he saw just as he was 
going into the harbor,—a heavy brig warping out, and very 
likely to get in his way, or run against the pier, and bad 
weather coming on. ‘Then there is the “ Calais Pier,” a large 
painting, engraved some years ago by Mr. Lupton:* that is 
what he saw when he had landed, and ran back directly to the 
pier to see what had become of the brig. The weather had 
got still worse, the fishwomen were being blown about in a 
distressful manner on the pier head, and some more fishing 
boats were running in with all speed. Then there is the 
‘“‘Wortrouge,” Calais: that is what he saw after he had been 
home to Dessein’s, and dined, and went out again in the even- 
ing to walk on the sands, the tide being down. He had never 
* The plate was, however, never published, 


PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 271 


seen such a waste of sands before, and it made an impression 
on him. The shrimp girls were all scattered over them too, 
and moved about in white spots on the wild shore ; and the 
storm had lulled a little, and there was a sunset—such a sun- 
set,—and the bars of Fortrouge seen against it, skeleton-wise. 
He did not paint that directly ; thought over it,—painted it 
a long while afterwards. 

Then there is the vignette in the illustrations to Scott. 
That is what he saw as he was going home, meditatively ; and 
the revolving lighthouse came blazing out upon him suddenly, 
and disturbed him. He did not like that so much ; made a 
vignette of it, however, when he was asked to do a bit of 
Calais, twenty or thirty years afterwards, having already done 
all the rest. 

Turner never told me all this, but any one may see it if he 
will compare the pictures. They might, possibly, not be im- 
pressions of a single day, but of two days or three ; though 
in all human probability they were seen just as I have stated 
them ;* but they are records of successive impressions, as 
plainly written as ever traveller’s diary. All of them pure 
veracities. Therefore immortal. 

I could multiply these series almost indefinitely from the 
rest of his works. What is curious, some of them have a kind 
of private mark running through all the subjects. Thus I 
know three drawings of Scarborough, and all of them have a 
starfish in the foreground: I do not remember any others of 
his marine subjects which have a starfish. 

The other kind of repetition—the recurrence to one early 
impression—is however still more remarkable. In the collec- 
tion of I’. H. Bale, Esq., there is a small drawing of Llanthony 
Abbey. It isin his boyish manner, its date probably about 
1795 ; evidently a sketch from nature, finished at home. It 
had been a showery day ; the hills were partially concealed 
by the rain, and gleams of sunshine breaking out at intervals. 
A man was fishing in the mountain stream. The young 

* And the more probably because Turner was never fond of staying 


long at any place, and was least of all likely to make a pause of two or 
three days at the beginning of Jlis journey. 


272 PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 


Turner sought a place of some shelter under the bushes ; 
made his sketch, took great pains when he got home to imi- 
tate the rain, as he best could ; added his child’s luxury of a 
rainbow ; put in the very bush under which he had taken 
shelter, and the fisherman, a somewhat ill-jointed and long- 
legged fisherman, in the courtly short breeches which were the 
fashion of the time. 

Some thirty years afterwards, with all his powers in their 
strongest training, and after the total change in his feelings 
and principles which I have endeavored to describe, he un- 
dertook the series of “ England and Wales,” and in that series 
introduced the subject of Llanthony Abbey. And behold, he 
went back to his boy’s sketch, and boy’s thought. He kept 
the very bushes in their places, but brought the fisherman to 
the other side of the river, and put him, in somewhat less 
courtly dress, under their shelter, instead of himself. And 
then he set all his gained strength and new knowledge at 
work on the well-remembered shower of rain, that had fallen 
thirty years before, to do it better. The resultant drawing * 
is one of the very noblest of his second period. 

Another of the drawings of the England series, Ulleswater, 
is the repetition of one in Mr. Fawkes’s collection, which, by 
the method of its execution, I should conjecture to have been 
executed about the year 1808, or 1810: at all events, it is a 
very quiet drawing of the first period. The lake is quite 
calm ; the western hills in grey shadow, the eastern massed in 
light. Helvellyn rising like a mist between them, all being 
mirrored in the calm water. Some thin and slightly evanes- 
cent cows are standing in the shallow water in front; a boat 
floats motionless about a hundred yards from the shore: the 
foreground is of broken rocks, with lovely pieces of copse on 
the right and left. 

This was evidently Turner’s record of a quiet evening by 
the shore of Ulleswater, but it was a feeble one. He could 
not at that time render the sunset colors: he went back to 
it therefore in the England series, and painted it again with 
his new power. The same hills are there, the same shadows, 

* Vide Modern Painters, Part II. Sect. TII. Chap. IV. § 14. 


PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 273 


the same cows,—they had stood in his mind, on the same 
spot, for twenty years,—the same boat, the same rocks, only 
the copse is cut away—it interfered with the masses of his col- 
or: some figures are introduced bathing, and what was grey, 
and feeble gold in the first drawing, becomes purple, and burn- 
ing rose-color in the last. 

But perhaps one of the most curious examples is in the 
series of subjects from Winchelsea. That in the Liber Stu- 
diorum, ‘‘ Winchelsea, Sussex,” bears date 1812, and its fig- 
ures consist of a soldier speaking to a woman, who is resting 
on the bank beside the road. There is another small subject, 
with Winchelsea in the distance, of which the engraving bears 
date 1817. It has two women with bundles, and two soldiers 
toiling along the embankment in the plain, and a baggage 
waggon in the distance. Neither of these seems to have sat- 
isfied him, and at last he did another for the England series, 
of which the engraving bears date 1830. There is nowa regi- 
ment on the march ; the baggage waggon is there, having got 
no further on in the thirteen years, but one of the women is 
tired, and has fainted on the bank ; another is supporting her 
against her bundle, and giving her drink ; a third sympathetic 
woman is added, and the two soldiers have stopped, and one 
is drinking from his canteen. 

Nor is it merely of entire scenes, or of particular incidents, 
that Turner’s memory is thus tenacious. The slightest pas- 
sages of color or arrangement that have pleased him—the 
fork of a bough, the casting of a shadow, the fracture of a 
stone—will be taken up again and again, and strangely worked 
into new relations with other thoughts. There is a single 
sketch from nature in one of the portfolios at Farnley, of a 
common wood-walk on the estate, which has furnished pas- 
sages to no fewer than three of the most elaborate composi- 
tions in the Liber Studiorum. 

Tam thus tedious in dwelling on Turner’s powers of memory, 
because I wish it to be thoroughly seen how all his greatness, 
all his infinite luxuriance of invention, depends on his taking 
possession of everything that he sees,—on his grasping all, 
and losing hold of nothing,—on his forgetting himself, and 


274 PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 


forgetting nothing else. I wish it to be understood how every 
great man paints what he sees or did see, his greatness being 
indeed little else than his intense sense of fact. And thus 
Pre-Raphaelitism and Raphaelitism, and Turnerism, are all 
one and the same, so far as education can influence them. 
They are different in their choice, different in their faculties, 
but all the same in this, that Raphael himself, so far as he was 
great, and all who preceded or followed him who ever were 
great, became so by painting the truths around them as they 
appeared to each man’s own mind, not as he had been taught 
to see them, except by the God who made both him and 
them. 

There is, however, one more characteristic of Turner’s 
second period, on which I have still to dwell, especially 
with reference to what has been above advanced respecting 
the fallacy of overtoil; namely, the magnificent ease with 
which all is done when it is successfully done. For there are 
one.or two drawings of this time which are not done easily. 
Turner had in these set himself to do a fine thing to exhibit 
his powers ; in the common phrase, to excel himself ; so sure as 
he does this, the work is a failure. The worst drawings that 
have ever come from his hands are some of this second period, 
on which he has spent much time and laborious thought ; 
drawings filled with incident from one side to the other, with 
skies stippled into morbid blue, and warm lights set against 
them in violent contrast ; one of Bamborough Castle, a large 
water-color, may be named as an example. But the truly 
noble works are those in which, without effort, he has expressed 
his thoughts as they came, and forgotten himself; and in these 
the outpouring of invention is not less miraculous than the 
swiftness and obedience of the mighty hand that expresses it. 
Any one who examines the drawings may see the evidence of 
this facility, in the strange freshness and sharpness of every 
touch of color; but when the multitude of delicate touches, 
with which all the aerial tones are worked, is taken into con- 
sideration, it would still appear impossible that the drawing 
could have been completed with ease, unless we had direct 
evidence in the matter : fortunately, it is not wanting. There 


PREHE-RAPHAELITISM. 275 


is a drawing in Mr. Fawkes’s collection of a man-of-war taking 
in stores: it is of the usual size of those of the England se- 
ries, about sixteen inches by eleven: it does not appear one 
of the most highly finished, but is still farther removed from 
slightness. The hull of a first-rate occupies nearly one-half 
of the picture on the right, her bows towards the spectator, 
seen in sharp perspective from stem to stern, with all her 
portholes, guns, anchors, and lower rigging elaborately de- 
tailed ; there are two other ships of the line in the middle dis- 
tance, drawn with equal precision ; a noble breezy sea dancing 
against their broad bows, full of delicate drawing in its waves ; 
a store-ship beneath the hull of the larger vessel, and several 
other boats, and a complicated cloudy sky. It might appear 
no small exertion of mind to draw the detail of all this ship- 
ping down to the smallest ropes, from memory, in the draw- 
ing-room of a mansion in the middle of Yorkshire, even if 
considerable time had been given for the effort. But Mr. 
Fawkes sat beside the painter from the first stroke to the last. 
Turner took a piece of blank paper one morning after break- 
fast, outlined his ships, finished the drawing in three hours, 
and went out to shoot. 

Let this single fact be quietly meditated upon by our ordi- 
nary painters, and they will see the truth of what was above 
asserted,—that if a great thing can be done at all, it can be 
done easily ; and let them not torment themselves with twist- 
ing of compositions this way and that, and repeating, and ex- 
perimenting, and scene-shifting. If a man can compose at 
all, he can compose at once, or rather he must compose in 
spite of himself. And this is the reason of that silence which 
I have kept in most of my works, on the subject of Composi- 
tion. Many critics, especially the architects, have found fault 
with me for not “teaching people how to arrange masses ;” 
for not “attributing sufficient importance to composition.” 
Alas! I attribute far more importance to it than they do ;— 
so much importance, that I should just as soon think of sit- 
ting down to teach a man how to write a Divina Commedia, 
or King Lear, as how to “ compose,” in the true sense, a sin- 
ele building or picture. The marvellous stupidity of this age 


276 PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 


of lecturers is, that they do not see that what they call “ prin- 
ciples of composition,” are mere principles of common sense 
in everything, as well as in pictures and buildings ;—A pict- 
ure is to have a principal ight? Yes; and so a dinner is to 
have a principal dish, and an oration a principal point, and an 
air of music a principal note, and every man a principal ob- 
ject. A picture is to have harmony of relation among its 
parts? Yes; and so is a speech well uttered, and an action 
well ordered, and a company well chosen, and a ragout well 
mixed. Composition! As if a man were not composing 
every moment of his life, well or ill, and would not do it in- 
stinctively in his picture as well as elsewhere, if he could. 
Composition of this lower or common kind is of exactly the 
same importance in a picture that it is in any thing else,—no 
more. It is well that a man should say what he has to say in 
good order and sequence, but the main thing is to say it truly. 
And yet we go on preaching to our pupils as if to have a prin- 
cipal light was every thing, and so cover our academy walls 
with Shacabae feasts, wherein the courses are indeed well or- 
dered, but the dishes empty. 

It is not, however, only in invention that men overwork 
themselves, but in execution also ; and here I have a word to 
say to the Pre-Raphaelites specially. They are working too 
hard. There is evidence in failing portions of their pictures, 
showing that they have wrought so long upon them that their 
very sight has failed for weariness, and that the hand refused 
any more to obey the heart. And, besides this, there are cer- 
tain qualities of drawing which they miss from over-careful- 
ness. For, let them be assured, there is a great truth lurking 
in that common desire of men to see things done in what they 
call a ‘‘ masterly,” or “ bold,” or ‘‘ broad,” manner: a truth op- 
pressed and abused, like almost every other in this world, but 
an eternal one nevertheless ; and whatever mischief may haye 
followed from men’s looking for nothing else but this facility 
of execution, and supposing that a picture was assuredly all 
right if only it were done with broad dashes of the brush, 
still the truth remains the same :—that because it is not in- 
tended that men shall torment or weary themselves with any 


PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 277 


earthly labor, it is appointed that the noblest results should 
only be attainable by a certain ease and decision of manipula- 
tion. I only wish people understood this much of sculpture, 
as well as of painting, and could see that the finely finished 
statue is, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, a far more 
vulgar work than that which shows rough signs of the right 
hand laid to the workman’s hammer: but at all events, in 
painting it is felt by all men, and justly felt. The freedom of 
the lines of nature can only be represented by a similar free- 
dom in the hand that follows them ; there are curves in the 
flow of the hair, and in the form of the features, and in the 
muscular outline of the body, which can in no wise be caught 
but by a sympathetic freedom in the stroke of the pencil. [ 
do not care what example is taken, be it the most subtle and 
careful work of Leonardo himself, there will be found a play 
and power and ease in the outlines, which no slow effort could 
ever imitate. And if the Pre-Raphaelites do not understand 
how this kind of power, in its highest perfection, may be 
united with the most severe rendering of all other orders of 
truth, and especially of those with which they themselves have 
most sympathy, let them look at the drawings of John Lewis. 

These then are the principal lessons which we have to learz 
from Turner, in his second or central period of labor. There 
is one more, however, to be received ; and that is a warning ; 
for towards the close of it, what with doing small conventional 
vignettes for publishers, making showy drawings from sketches 
taken by other people of places he had never seen, and touch- 
ing up the bad engravings from his works submitted to him 
almost every day,—engravings utterly destitute of animation, 
and which had to be raised into a specious brilliancy by 
scratching them over with white, spotty lights, he gradually 
got inured to many conventionalities, and even falsities ; and, 
having trusted for ten or twelve years almost entirely to his 
memory and invention, living I believe mostly in London, and 
receiving a new sensation only from the burning of the 
Houses of Parliament, he painted many pictures between 
1830 and 1840 altogether unworthy of him. But he was not 
thus to close his career. 


278 PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 


In the summer either of 1840 or 1841, he undertook another 
journey into Switzerland. It was then at least forty years 
since he had first seen the Alps ; (the source of the Arveron, 
in Mr. Fawkes’s collection, which could not have been painted 
till he had seen the thing itself, bears date 1800,) and the 
direction of his journey in 1840 marks his fond memory of 
that earliest one ; for, if we look over the Swiss studies and 
drawings executed in his first period, we shall be struck with 
his fondness for the pass of the St. Gothard; the most elabo- 
rate drawing in the Farnley collection is one of the Lake of 
Lucerne from Fluelen ; and, counting the Liber Studiorum 
subjects, there are, to my knowledge, six compositions taken 
at the same period from the pass of St. Gothard, and, proba- 
bly, several others are in existence. The valleys of Sallenche, 
and Chamouni, and Lake of Geneva, are the only other Swiss 
scenes which seem to have made very profound impressions 
on him. 

He returned in 1841 to Lucerne ; walked up Mont Pilate on 
foot, crossed the St. Gothard, and returned by Lausanne and 
Geneva. He made a large number of colored sketches on this 
journey, and realised several of them on his return. The draw- 
ings thus produced are different from all that had preceded 
them, and are the first which belong definitely to what I shall 
henceforth call his Third period. 

The perfect repose of his youth had returned to his mind, 
while the faculties of imagination and execution appeared in 
renewed strength; all conventionality being done away with 
by the force of the impression which he had received from the 
Alps, after his long separation from them. The drawings are 
marked by a peculiar largeness and simplicity of thought: 
most of them by deep serenity, passing into melancholy ; all 
by a richness of color, such as he had never before conceived. 
They, and the works done in following years, bear the same 
relation to those of the rest of his life that the colors of 
sunset do to those of the day; and will be recognised, in a few 
years more, as the noblest landscapes ever yet conceived by 
human intellect. | 

Such has been the career of the greatest painter of this 


PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 279 


century. Many a century may pass away before there rises 
such another ; but what greatness any among us may be capa- 
ble of, will, at least, be best attained by following in his path ; 
by beginning in all quietness and hopefulness to use whatever 
powers we may possess to represent the things around us as 
we see and feel them; trusting to the close of life to give the 
perfect crown to the course of its labors, and knowing assur- 
edly that the determination of the degree in which watchful- 
ness is to be exalted into invention, rests with a higher will 
than our own. And, if not greatness, at least a certain good, 
is thus to be achieved ; for though I have above spoken of the 
mission of the more humble artist, as if it were merely to be 
subservient to that of the antiquarian or the man of science, 
there is an ulterior aspect in which it is not subservient, but 
superior. very archeologist, every natural philosopher, 
knows that there is a peculiar rigidity of mind brought on by 
long devotion to logical and analytical inquiries. Weak men, 
giving themselves to such studies, are utterly hardened by 
them, and become incapable of understanding anything nobler, 
or even of feeling the value of the results to which they lead. 
But even the best men are in a sort injured by them, and pay 
a definite price, as in most other matters, for definite advan- 
tages. They gain a peculiar strength, but lose in tenderness, 
elasticity, and impressibility. The man who has gone, ham- 
mer in hand, over the surface of a romantic country, feels 
no longer, in the mountain ranges he has so laboriously ex- 
plored, the sublimity or mystery with which they were veiled 
when he first beheld them, and with which they are adorned 
in the mind of the passing traveller. In his more informed 
conception, they arrange themselves like a dissected model : 
where another man would be awe-struck by the magnificence 
of the precipice, he sees nothing but the emergence of a fos- 
siliferous rock, familiarised already to his imagination as ex- 
tending in a shallow stratum, over a perhaps uninteresting 
district ; where the unlearned spectator would be touched with 
strong emotion by the aspect of the snowy summits which rise 
in the distance, he sees only the culminating points of a met- 
amorphic formation, with an uncomfortable web of fan-like 


280 PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 


fissures radiating, in his imagination, through their centres.* 
That in the grasp he has obtained of the inner relations of all 
these things to the universe, and to man, that in the views 
which have been opened to him of natural energies such as 
no human mind would have ventured to conceive, and of past 
states of being, each in some new way bearing witness to the 
unity of purpose and everlastingly consistent providence of 
the Maker of all things, he has received reward well worthy 
the sacrifice, [ would not for an instant deny; but the sense 
of the loss is not less painful to him if his mind be rightly 
constituted ; and it would be with infinite gratitude that he 
would regard the man, who, retaining in his delineation of 
natural scenery a fidelity to the facts of science so rigid as to 
make his work at once acceptable and credible to the most 
sternly critical intellect, should yet invest its features again 
with the sweet veil of their daily aspect; should make them 
dazzling with the splendor of wandering light, and involve 
them in the unsearchableness of stormy obscurity ; should re- 
store to the divided anatomy its visible vitality of operation, 
clothe naked crags with soft forests, enrich the mountain 
ruins with bright pastures, and lead the thoughts from the 
monotonous recurrence of the phenomena of the physical 
world, to the sweet interests and sorrows of human life and 
death. 


* This state of mind appears to have been the only one which Words- 
worth had been able to discern in men of science; and in disdain of 
which, he wrote that short-sighted passage in the Excursion, Book III. 
1. 165—190, which is, I think, the only one in the whole range of his 
works which his true friends would have desired to see blotted out. 
What else has been found fault with as feeble or superfluous, is not so 
in the intense distinctive relief which it gives to his character. But 
these lines are written in mere ignorance of the matter they treat; in 
mere want of sympathy with the men they describe; for, observe, though 
the passage is put into the mouth of the Solitary, it is fully confirmed, 
and even rendered more scornful, by the speech which follows. 


THE END. 


ARATRA PENTELICI 
och KES 
ON THE ELEMENTS OF 


SCULPTURE 


GIVEN BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD IN 
MICHAELMAS TERM, 1870 


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I must pray the readers of the following Lectures to re- 
member that the duty at present laid on me at Oxford is of 
an exceptionally complex character. Directly, it is to awaken 
the interest of my pupils in a study which they have hitherto 
found unattractive, and imagined to be ‘useless; but more 
imperatively, it is to define the principles by which the study 
itself should be guided; and to vindicate their security 
against the doubts with which frequent discussion has lately 
encumbered a subject which all think themselves competent 
to discuss. ‘The possibility of such vindication is, of course, 
implied in the original consent of the Universities to the es- 
tablishment of Art Professorships. Nothing can be made an 
element of education of which it is impossible to determine 
whether it is ill done or well; and the clear assertion that 
there is a canon law in formative Art is, at this time, a more 
important function of each University than the instruction of 
its younger members in any branch of practical skill. It mat- 
ters comparatively little whether few or many of our students 
learn to draw; but it matters much that all who learn should 
be taught with accuracy. And the number who may be justi- 
fiably advised to give any part of the time they spend at col- 
lege to the study of painting or sculpture ought to depend, 
and finally must depend, on their being certified that paint- 
ing and sculpture, no less than language or than reasoning, 
have grammar and method,—that they permit a recognizable 
distinction between scholarship and ignorance, and enforce a 
constant distinction between Right and Wrong. 

This opening course of Lectures on Sculpture is therefore 
restricted to the statement, not only of first principles, but of 


284 PREFACE. 


those which were illustrated by the practice of one school, 
and by that practice in its simplest branch, the analysis of 
which could be certified by easily accessible examples, and 
aided by the indisputable evidence of photography.* 

The exclusion of the terminal Lecture of the course from 
the series now published, is in order to mark more definitely 
this limitation of my subject ; but in other respects the Lect- 
ures have been amplified in arranging them for the press, 
and the portions of them trusted at the time to extempore 
delivery, (not through indolence, but because explanations of 
detail are always most intelligible when most familiar,) have 
been in substance to the best of my power set down, and in 
what I said too imperfectly, completed. 

In one essential »particular I have felt it necessary to write 
what I would not have spoken. I had intended to make no 
reference, in my University Lectures, to existing schools of 


* Photography cannot exhibit the character of large and finished sculpt- 
ure; but its audacity of shadow is in perfect harmony with the more 
roughly picturesque treatment necessary in coins. For tho rendering 
of allsuch frank relief, and for the better explanation of forms disturbed 
by the lustre of metal or polished stone, the method employed in the 
plates of this volume will be found, I believe, satisfactory. Casts are first 
taken from the coins, in white plaster; these are photographed, and the 
photograph printed by the heliotype process of Messrs. Edwards and 
Kidd. Plate XII. is exceptional, being a pure mezzotint engraving of 
the old school, excellently carried through by my assistant, Mr. Allen, 
who was taught, as a personal favour to myself, by my friend, and Tur- 
ner’s fellow-worker, Thomas Lupton. Plate IV. was intended to be a 
photograph from the superb vase in the British Museum, No. 564 in 
Mr. Newton's Catalogue ; but its variety of colour defied photography, 
and after the sheets had gone to press I was compelled to reduce Le 
Normand’s plate of it, which is unsatisfactory, but answers my imme- 
diate purpose. 

The enlarged photographs for use in the Lecture Room were made 
for me with most successful skill by Sergeant Spackman, of South Ken- 
sington ; and the help throughout rendered to me by Mr. Burgess is 
acknowledged in the course of the Lectures ; though with thanks which 
must remain inadequate lest they should become tedious; for Mr. Bur- 
gess drew the subjects of Plates III., X., and XIII. ; drew and engraved 
every woodcut in the book; and printed all the plates with his own 
land. 


PREPFACH. 285 


Art, except in cases where if might be necessary to point out 
some undervalued excellence. The objects specified in the 
eleventh paragraph of my inaugural Lecture, might, I hoped, 
have been accomplished without reference to any works de- 
serving of blame ; but the Exhibition of the Royal Academy 
in the present year showed me a necessity of departing from 
my original intention. The task of impartial criticism * is 
now, unhappily, no longer to rescue modest skill from neg- 
lect ; but to withstand the errors of insolent genius, and abate 
the influence of plausible mediocrity. 

The Exhibition of 1871 was very notable in this important 
particular, that it embraced some representation of the mod- 
ern schools of nearly every country in Europe: and I am well 
assured that looking back upon it after the excitement of that 
singular interest has passed away, every thoughtful judge of 
Art will confirm my assertion, that it contained not a single 
picture of accomplished merit ; while it contained many that 
were disgraceful to Art, and some that were disgraceful to 
humanity. : 

It becomes, under such circumstances, my inevitable duty 
to speak of the existing conditions of Art with plainness 
enough to guard the youths whose judgments I am entrusted 
to form, from being misled, either by their own naturally 
vivid interest in what represents, however unworthily, the 
scenes and persons of their own day, or by the cunningly de- 
vised, and, without doubt, powerful allurements of Art which 
has long since confessed itself to have no other object than to 
allure. I have, therefore, added to the second of these Lect- 
ures such illustration of the motives and course of modern 
industry as naturally arose out of its subject, and shall continue 


* A pamphlet by the Earl of Southesk, ‘‘ Britain’s Art Paradise,” 
(Edmonston and Douglas, Edinburgh) contains an entirely admirable 
criticism of the most faultful pictures of the 1871 Exhibition, It is to 
be regretted that Lord Southesk speaks only to condemn ; but indeed, 
in my own three days’ review of the rooms, I found nothing deserving 
of notice otherwise, except Mr. Hook’s always pleasant sketches from 
fisher life, and Mr. Pettie’s graceful and powerful, though too slightly 
painted, study from Henry VI. 


286 PREFACE. 


in future to make similar applications ; rarely, indeed, per. 
mitting myself, in the Lectures actually read before the 
University, to introduce subjects of instant, and therefore too 
exciting, interest ; but completing the addresses which I pre- 
pare for publication in these, and in any other particulars, 
which may render them more widely serviceable. 

The present course of Lectures will be followed, if I am 
able to fulfil the design of them, by one of a like elementary 
character on Architecture; and that by a third series on 
Christian Sculpture: but, in the meantime, my effort is to 
direct the attention of the resident students to Natural His- 
tory, and to the higher branches of ideal Landscape: and it 
will be, I trust, accepted as sufficient reason for the delay 
which has occurred in preparing the following sheets for the 
press, that I have not only been interrupted by a dangerous 
illness, but engaged, in what remained to me of the summer, 
in an endeavour to deduce, from the overwhelming complexity 
of modern classification in the Natural Sciences, some forms 
‘ capable of easier roference by Art students, to whom the 
anatomy of brutal and floral nature is often no less important 
than that of the human body. 

The preparation of examples for. manual practice, and the 
arrangement of standards for reference, both in Painting and 
Sculpture, had to be carried on meanwhile, as I was able. 
For what has already been done, the reader is referred to the 
Catalogue of the Educational Series, published at the end of 
the Spring Term ; of what remains to be done I will make no 
anticipatory statement, being content to have ascribed to me 
rather the fault of narrowness in design, than of extravagance 
in expectation. 


DENMARK HI, 
25th November, 1871. 


ARATRA PHNTELICI. 


LECTURE I. 
OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS. 
November, 1870. 


1. Ir, as is commonly believed, the subject of study which 
it is my special function to bring before you had no relation 
to the great interests of mankind, I should have less courage 
in asking for your attention to-day, than when I first addressed 
you ; though, even then, I did not do so without painful diffi- 
dence. For at this moment, even supposing that in other 
places it were possible for men to pursue their ordinary avo- 
cations undisturbed by indignation or pity; here, at least, in 
the midst of the deliberative and religious influences of Eng- 
land, only one subject, I am well assured, can seriously occupy 
your thoughts—the necessity, namely, of determining how it 
has come to pass, that in these recent days, iniquity the most 
reckless and monstrous can be committed unanimously,by men 
more generous than ever yet in the world’s history were de- 
ceived into deeds of cruelty; and that prolonged agony of 
body and spirit, such as we should shrink from inflicting wil- 
fully on a single criminal, has become the appointed and ac- 
cepted portion of unnumbered multitudes of innocent per- 
sons, inhabiting the districts of the world which, of all others, 
as it seemed, were best instructed in the laws of civilization, 
and most richly invested with the honour, and indulged in the 
felicity, of peace. 

Believe me, however, the subject of Art—instead of being 


288 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


foreign to these deep questions of social duty and peril,—is 
so vitally connected with them, that it would be impossible 
for me now to pursue the line of thought in which I began 
these lectures, because so ghastly an emphasis would be given 
to every sentence by the force of passing events. It is well, 
then, that in the plan I have laid down for your study, we 
shall now be led into the examination of technical details, or 
abstract conditions of sentiment ; so that the hours you spend 
with me may be times of repose from heavier thoughts. But 
it chances strangely that, in this course of minutely detailed 
study, I have first to set before you the most essential piece 
of human workmanship, the plough, at the very moment when 
—(you may see the announcement in the journals either of 
yesterday or the day before)—the swords of your soldiers have 
been sent for to be sharpened, and not at all to be beaten into 
ploughshares. I permit myself, therefore, to remind you of 
the watchword of all my earnest writings—‘ Soldiers of the 
Ploughshare, instead of Soldiers of the Sword ”—and I know 
it my duty to assert to you that the work we enter upon to-day 
is no trivial one, but full of solemn hope; the hope, namely, 
that among you there may be found men wise enough to lead 
the national passions towards the arts of peace, instead of the 
arts of war. 

I say the work “‘ we enter upon,” because the first four lect- 
ures I gave in the spring were wholly prefatory; and the 
following three only defined for you methods of practice. 'To- 
day we begin the systematic analysis and progressive study of 
our subject. 

2. In general, the three great, or fine, Arts of Painting, 
Sculpture, and Architecture, are thought of as distinct from 
the lower and more mechanical formative arts, such as car- 
pentry or pottery. But we cannot, either verbally, or with any 
practical advantage, admit such classification. How are we to 
distinguish painting on canvas from painting on china ?—or 
painting on china from painting on glass?—or painting on 
glass from infusion of colour into any vitreous substance, such 
as enamel ?—or the infusion of colour into glass and enamel 
from the infusion of colour into wool or silk, and weaving of 


OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS. 289 


pictures in tapestry, or patterns in dress? You will find that 
although, in ultimately accurate use of the word, painting 
must be held to mean only the laying of a pigment on a surface 
with a soft instrument ; yet, in broad comparison of the func- 
tions of Art, we must conceive of one and the same great artis- 
tic faculty, as governing every mode of disposing colours in a 
permanent relation on, or in, a solid substance ; whether it be by 
tinting canvas, or dyeing stuffs; inlayine metals with fused 
flint, or coating walls with coloured stone. 

3. Similarly the word “Sculpture,”—though in ultimate ac- 
curacy it is to be limited to the development of form in hard 
substances by cutting away portions of their mass—in broad 
definition, must be held to signify the reduction of any shape- 
less mass of solid matter into an intended shape, whatever the 
consistence of the substance, or nature of the instrument em- 
ployed ; whether we carve a granite mountain, or a piece of 
box-wood, and whether we use, for our forming instrument, 
axe, or hammer, or chisel, or our own hands, or water to 
soften, or fire to fuse ;—whenever and however we bring a 
shapeless thing into shape, we do so under the laws of the one 
ereat Art of Sculpture. 

4, Having thus broadly defined painting and sculpture, we 
shall see that there is, in the third place, a class of work sep- 
arated from both, in a specific manner, and including a great 
eroup of arts which neither, of necessity, dint, nor for the sake 
‘of form merely, shape, the substances they deal with ; but con- 
struct or arrange them with a view to the resistance of some 

“external force. We construct, for instance, a table with a flat 
top, and some support of prop, or leg, proportioned in strength 
to such weights as the table is intended to carry. We con- 
struct a ship out of planks, or plates of iron, with reference 
to certain forces of impact to be sustained, and of inertia to be 
overcome ; or we construct a wall or roof with distinct refer- 
ence to forces of pressure and oscillation, to be sustained or 
guarded against; and therefore, in every case, with especial 
consideration of the strength of our materials, and the nature 
of that strength, elastic, tenacious, brittle, and the like. 

Now although this group of arts nearly always involves the 


290 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


putting of two or more separate pieces together, we must not 
define it by that accident. The blade of an oar is not less 
formed with reference to external force than if it were made 
of many pieces; and the frame of a boat, whether hollowed 
out of a tree-trunk, or constructed of planks nailed together, 
is essentially the same piece of art; to be judged by its 
buoyancy and capacity of progression. Still, from the most 
wonderful piece of all architecture, the human skeleton, to 
this simple one,* the ploughshare, on which it depends for its 
subsistence, the putting of two or more pieces together is 
curiously necessary to the perfectness of every fine instru- 
ment ; and the peculiar mechanical work of Deedalus,—inlay- 
ing,—becomes all the more delightful to us in external aspect, 
because, as in the jawbone of a Saurian, or the wood of a 
bow, it is essential to the finest capacities of tension and re- 
sistance. 

5. And observe how unbroken the ascent from this, the 
simplest architecture, to the loftiest. The placing of the 
timbers in a ship’s stem, and the laying of the stones in a 
bridge buttress, are similar in art to the construction of the 
ploughshare, differing in no essential point, either in that they 
deal with other materials, or because, of the three things pro- 
duced, one has to divide earth by advancing through it, 
another to divide water by advancing through it, and the 
third to divide water which advances against it. And again, 
the buttress of a bridge differs only from that of a cathedral 
in having less weight to sustain, and more to resist. We can 
find no term in the gradation, from the ploughshare to the 
cathedral buttress, at which we can set a logical distinction. 

6. Thus then we have simply three divisions of Art—one, 
that of giving colours to substance ; another, that of giving 
form to it without question of resistance to force; and the 
third, that of giving form or position which will make it 
capable of such resistance. All the fine arts are embraced 


* T had a real ploughshare on my lecture table; but it would inter- 
rupt the drift of the statements in the text too long if I attempted here 
to illustrate by figures the relation of the coulter to the share, and of the 
hard to the soft pieces of metal in the share itself. 


OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS. 291 


under these three divisions. Do not think that it is only a 
logical or scientific affectation to mass them together in this 
manner ; it is, on the contrary, of the first practical im- 
portance to understand that the painter’s faculty, or master- 
hood over colour, being as subtle as a musician’s over sound, 
must be looked to for the government of every operation in 
which colour is employed ; and that, in the same manner, the 
appliance of any art whatsoever to minor objects cannot be 
right, unless under the direction of a true master of that art. 
Under the present system, you keep your Academician occu- 
pied only in producing tinted pieces of canvas to be shown in 
frames, and smooth pieces of marble to be placed in niches ; 
while you expect your builder or constructor to design 
coloured patterns in stone and brick, and your china-ware 
merchant to keep a separate body of workwomen who can 
paint china, but nothing else. By this division of labour, you 
ruin all the arts at once. The work of the Academician be- 
comes mean and effeminate, because he is not used to treat 
colour on a grand scale and in rough materials; and your 
manufactures become base because no well edueated person 
sets hand to them. And therefore it is necessary to under- 
stand, not merely as a logical statement, but as a practical 
necessity, that wherever beautiful colour is to be arranged, 
you need a Master of Painting; and wherever noble form is 
to be given, a Master of Sculpture ; and wherever complex 
mechanical force is to be resisted, a Master of Architecture. 

7. But over this triple division there must rule another yet 
more important. Any of these three arts may be either 
imitative of natural objects or limited to useful appliance. 
You may either paint a picture that represents a scene, or 
your street door, to keep it from rotting ; you may mould a 
statue, or a plate ; build the resemblance of a cluster of lotus 
stalks, or only a square pier. Generally speaking, Painting 
and Sculpture will be imitative, and Architecture merely 
useful ; but there is a great deal of Sculpture—as this crystal 
ball * for instance, which is not imitative, and a great deal of 


* A sphere of rock crystal, cut in Japan, enough imaginable by the 
reader, without a figure, 


292 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


Architecture which, to some extent is so, as the so-called foils 
of Gothic apertures ; and for many other reasons you will find 
it necessary to keep distinction clear in your minds between 
the arts—of whatever kind—which are imitative, and produce 
a resemblance or image of something which is not present ; 
and those which are limited to the production of some useful 
reality, as the blade of a knife, or the wall of a house. You 
will perceive also, as we advance, that sculpture and painting 
are indeed in this respect only one art; and that we shall 
have constantly to speak and think of them as simply graphic, 
whether with chisel or colour, their principal function being 
to make us, in the words of Aristotle, ‘‘ Gewpyrtixot rod rept Ta. 
gdpata KaAdovs ” (Polit. 8, 3.), ‘ having capacity and habit of 
contemplation of the beauty that is in material things ;” while 
Architecture, and its co-relative arts, are to be practised under 
quite other conditions of sentiment. 

8. Now it is obvious that so far as the fine arts consist 
either in imitation or mechanical construction, the right judg- 
ment of them must depend on our knowledge of the things 
they imitate, and forces they resist: and my function of 
teaching here would (for instance) so far resolve itself, either 
into demonstration that this painting of a peach,* does re- 
semble a peach, or explanation of the way in which this 
ploughshare (for instance) is shaped so as to throw the earth 
aside with least force of thrust. And in both of these methods 
of study, though of course your own diligence must be your 
chief master, to a certain extent your Professor of Art can 
always guide you securely, and can show you, either that the 
image does truly resemble what it attempts to resemble, or 
that the structure is rightly prepared for the service it has to 
perform. But there is yet another virtue of fine art which is, 
perhaps, exactly that about which you will expect your Pro- 
fessor to teach you most, and which, on the contrary, is 
exactly that about which you must teach yourselves all that 
it is essential to learn. 

9. I have here in my hand one of the simplest possible 


* One of William Hunt's peaches ; not, I am afraid, imaginable alto. 
gether, but still less representable by figure. 


OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS. 293 


examples of the union of the graphic and constructive pow- 
ers,—one of my breakfast plates. Since all the finely archi- 
tectural arts, we said, began in the shaping of the cup and 
the platter, we will begin, ourselves, with the platter. 

Why has it been made round? For two structural reasons: 
first, that the greatest holding surface may be gathered into 
the smallest space ; and secondly, that in being pushed past 
other things on the table, it may come into least contact with 
them. 






Br 


MLA 
A 
[ 


Frey. 


Next, why has it arim? Yor two other structural reasons ; 
first, that it is convenient to put salt or mustard upon ; but 
secondly and chiefly, that the plate may be easily laid hold of. 
The rim is the simplest form of continuous handle. 

Farther, to keep it from soiling the cloth, it will be wise to 
put this ridge beneath, round the bottom ; for as the rim is 
the simplest possible form of continuous handle, so this is the 
simplest form of continuous leg. And we get the section 
given beneath the figure for the essential one of a rightly 
made platter. 


294 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


10. Thus far our art has been strictly utilitarian having 
respect to conditions of collision, of carriage, and of support. 
But now, on the surface of our piece of pottery, here are vari- 
ous bands and spots of colour which are presumably set there 
to make it pleasanter to the eye. Six of the spots, seen closely, 
You discover are intended to represent flowers. These then 
have as distinctly a graphic purpose as the other properties 
of the plate have an architectural one, and the first critical 
question we have to ask about them is, whether they are like 
roses or not. I will anticipate what I have to say in subse- 
quent lectures so far as to assure you that, if they are to be 
like roses at all, the liker they can be, the better. Do not 
suppose, as many people will tell you, that because this is a 
common manufactured article, your roses on it are the better 
for being ill-painted, or half-painted. If they had been painted 
by the same hand that did this peach, the plate would have 
been all the better for it; but, as it chanced, there was no 
hand such as William Hunt's to paint them, and their graphic 
- power is not distinguished. - In any case, however, that graphic 
power must have been subordinate to their effect as pink 
spots, while the band of green-blue round the plate’s edge, 
and the spots of gold, pretend to no graphic power at all, but 
are meaningless spaces of colour or metal. Still less have 
they any mechanical office: they add nowise to the service- 
ableness of the plate ; and their agreeableness, if they possess 
any, depends, therefore, neither on any imitative, nor any 
structural, character ; but on some inherent pleasantness in 
themselves, either of mere colours to the eye (as of taste to 
the tongue), or in the placing of those colours in relations 
which obey some mental principle of order, or physical prin- 
ciple of harmony. 

11, These abstract relations and inherent pleasantnesses, 
whether in space, number, or time, and whether of colours or 
sounds, form what we may properly term the musical or har- 
monic element in every art; and the study of them is an en- 
tirely separate science. It is the branch of art-philosophy to 
which the word “ esthetics” should be strictly limited, being 
the inquiry into the nature of things that in themselves are 


OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS. 295 


pleasant to the human senses or instincts, though they repre- 
sent nothing, and serve for nothing, their only service being 
their pleasantness. Thus it is the province of esthetics to 
tell you, (if you did not know it before,) that the taste and 
colour of a peach are pleasant, and to ascertain, if it be ascer- 
tainable, (and you have any curiosity to know,) why they are so. 

12. The information would, I presume, to most of you, be 
gratuitous. If it were not, and you chanced to be in a sick 
state of body in which you disliked peaches, it would be, for 
the time, to you false information, and, so far as it was true 
of other people, to you useless. Nearly the whole study of 
cesthetics is in ike manner either gratuitous or useless. Hither 
you like the right things without being recommended to do 
so, or if you dislike them, your mind cannot be changed by 
lectures on the laws of taste. You recollect the story of 
Lhackeray, provoked, ashe was helping himself to strawberries, 
by a young coxcomb’s telling him that “he never took fruit 
or sweets.” ‘‘'That” replied, or is said to have replied, Thack- 
eray, “is because you are a sot, and a glutton.” And the 
whole science of esthetics is, in the depth of it, expressed by 
one passage of Goethe's in the end of the 2nd part of Faust ; 
—the notable one that follows the song of the Lemures, when 
the angels enter to dispute with the fiends for the soul of 
Faust. They enter singing—‘‘ Pardon to sinners and life 
to the dust.” Mephistopheles hears them first, and exclaims 
to his troop, ‘‘ Discord I hear, and filthy jingling ”—‘“ Mis- 
tine hore ich; garstiges Geklimper.” This, you see, is the 
extreme of bad taste in music. Presently the angelic host 
begin strewing roses, which discomfits the diabolic crowd al- 
together. Mephistopheles in vain calls to them—‘ What do 
you duck and shrink for—is that proper hellish behaviour? 
Stand fast, and let them strew ”—‘‘ Was duckt und zuckt ihr ; 
ist das Hellen-brauch? So haltet stand, und lasst sie streuen.” 
There you have, also, the extreme of bad taste in sight and 
smell. And in the whole passage is a brief embodiment fox 
you of the ultimate fact that all sesthetics depend on the 
health of soul and body, and the proper exercise of both, not 
only through years, but generations. Only by harmony of 


‘296 ARATIA PENTELICTI. 


both collateral and successive lives can the great doctrine of 
the Muses be received which enables men “ xaipew épOas,” 
“to have pleasures rightly ;” and there is no other definition 
of the beautiful, nor of any subject of delight to the esthetic 
faculty, than that it is what one noble spirit has created, seen 
and felt by another of similar or equal nobility. So much as 
there is in you of ox, or of swine, perceives no beauty, and 
creates none: what is human in you, in exact proportion to 
the perfectness of its humanity, can create it, and receive. 

13. Returning now to the very elementary form in which 
the appeal to our esthetic virtue is made in our breakfast- 
plate, you notice that there are two distinct kinds of pleasant- 
ness attempted. One by hues of colour; the other by pro- 
portions of space. I have called these the musical elements 
of the arts relating to sight ; and there are indeed two com- 
plete sciences, one of the combinations of colour, and the 
other of the combinations of line and form, which might each 
of them separately engage us in as intricate study as that of 
the science of music. But of the two, the science of colour is, 
in the Greek sense, the more musical, being one of the divis- 
ions of the Apolline power ; and it is so practically educa- 
tional, that if we are not using the faculty for colour to dis- 
cipline nations, they will infallibly use it themselves as a 
means of corruption. Both music and colour are naturally 
influences of peace; but in the war trumpet, and the war 
shield, in the battle song and battle standard, they have con- 
centrated by beautiful imagination the cruel passions of men ; 
and there is nothing in all the Divina Commedia of history 
more grotesque, yet more frightful, than the fact that, from 
the almost fabulous period when the insanity and impiety of 
war wrote themselves in the symbols of the shields of the 
Seven against Thebes, colours have been the sign and stimu- 
lus of the most furious and fatal passions that have rent the 
nations: blue against green, in the decline of the Roman Em- 
pire ; black against white, in that of Florence ; red against 
white, in the wars of the Royal houses in England ; and at 
this moment, red against white, in the contest of anarchy and 
loyalty, in all the world. 


OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS. 297 


14, On the other hand, the directly ethical influence of 
colour in the sky, the trees, flowers, and coloured creatures 
round us, and in our own various arts massed under the one 
name of painting, is so essential and constant that we cease to 
recognize it, because we are never long enough altogether de- 
prived of it to feel our need; and the mental diseases induced 
by the influence of corrupt colour are as little suspected, or 
traced to their true source, as the bodily weaknesses resulting 
from atmospheric miasmata. 

15. The second musical science which belongs peculiarly to 
sculpture (and to painting, so far as it represents form), con- 
sists in the disposition of beautiful masses. That is to say, 
beautiful surfaces limited by beautiful lines. Beautiful sur- 
faces, observe ; and remember what is noted in my fourth lect- 
ure of the difference between a space and a mass. If you 
have at any time examined carefully, or practised from, the 
drawings of shells placed in your copying series, you cannot 
pout have felt the difference in the grace between the aspects 
of the same line, when enclosing a rounded or unrounded 
space. The exact science of sculpture is that of the relations 
between outline and the solid form it limits ; and it does not 
matter whether that relation be indicated by drawing or carv- 
ing, so long as the expression of solid form is the mental pur- 
pose ; itis the science always of the beauty of relation in three 
dimensions. To take the simplest possible line of continuous 
limit—the circle: the flat dise enclosed by it may indeed be 
made an element of decoration, though a very meagre one: 
but its relative mass, the ball, being gradated in three dimen- 
sions, is always delightful. Here * is at once the simplest, 
and in mere patient mechanism, the most skilful, piece of 
sculpture I can possibly show you,—a piece of the purest 
rock-crystal, chiselled, (I believe, by mere toil of hand,) into 
a perfect sphere. Imitating nothing, constructing nothing ; 
sculpture for sculpture’s sake, of purest natural substance into 
simplest primary form. 

16. Again. Out of the nacre of any mussel or oyster-shell 
you might cut, at your pleasure, any quantity of small flat cir- 

* The crystal ball above mentioned. 


298 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


cular dises of the prettiest colour and lustre. To some extent, 
such tinsel or foil of shell is used pleasantly for decoration. 
But the mussel or oyster becoming itself an unwilling model. 
ler, agglutinates its juice into three dimensions, and the fact 
of the surface being now geometrically gradated, together 
with the savage instinct of attributing value to what is diffi- 
cult to obtain, make the little boss so precious in men’s sight 
that wise eagerness of search for the kingdom of heaven can 
be likened to their eagerness of search for it ; and the gates 
of Paradise can be no otherwise rendered so fair to their poor 
intelligence, as by telling them that every several gate was of 
“one pearl.” 

17. But take note here. We have just seen that the sum of 
the perceptive faculty is expressed in those words of Aristotle’s 
“to take pleasure rightly ” or straightly— xaipew dp6as. Now, 
it is not possible to do the direct opposite of that,—to take 
pleasure iniquitously or obliquely—xaipew adickws Or oxoALs— 
more than you do in enjoying a thing because your neighbour 
cannot get it. You may enjoy a thing legitimately because it 
is rare, and cannot be seen often, (as you do a fine aurora, or 
a sunset, or an unusually lovely flower) ; that is Nature’s way 
of stimulating your attention. But if you enjoy it because 
your neighbour cannot have it—and, remember, all value at- 
tached to pearls more than glass beads, is merely and purely 
for that cause,-—then you rejoice through the worst of idola- 
tries, covetousness ; and neither arithmetic, nor writing, nor 
any other so-called essential of education, is now so vitally nec- 
essary to the population of Europe, as such acquaintance 
with the principles of intrinsic value, as may result in the 
iconoclasm of jewellery ; and in the clear understanding that 
we are not in that instinct, civilized, but yet remain wholly 
savage, so far as we care for display of this selfish kind. 

You think, perhaps, I am quitting my subject, and proceed- 
ing, as it is too often with appearance of justice alleged against 
me, into irrelevant matter. Pardon me; the end, not only of 
these lectures, but of my whole professorship, would be ac- 
complished,—and far more than that,—if only the English 
nation could be made to understand that the beauty which is 


OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS. 299 


indeed to be a joy for ever, must be a joy for all; and that 
though the idolatry may not have been wholly divine which 
sculptured gods, the idolatry is wholly diabolic, which, for 
vulgar display, sculptures diamonds. 

18. To go back to the point under discussion. A pearl, or 
a glass bead, may owe its pleasantness in some degree to its 
lustre as well as to its roundness. But amere and simple 
ball of unpolished stone is enough for sculpturesque value. 
You may have noticed that the quatrefoil used in the Ducal 
Palace of Venice owes its complete loveliness in distant effect 
to the finishing of its cusps. The extremity of the cusp isa 
mere ball of Istrian marble ; and consider how subtle the 
faculty of sight must be, since it recognizes at any distance, 
and is gratified by, the mystery of the termination of cusp ob- 
tained by the gradated light on the ball. 

In that Venetian tracery this simplest element of sculptured 
form is used sparingly, as the most precious that can be em- 
ployed to finish the facade. But alike in our own, and the 
French, central Gothic, the ball-flower is lavished on every 
line—and in your St. Mary’s spire, and the Salisbury spire, 
and the towers of Notre Dame of Paris, the rich pleasantness 
of decoration,—indeed, their so-called ‘‘ decorated style,’— 
consists only in being daintily beset with stone balls. It is 
true the balls are modified into dim likeness of flowers ; but 
do you trace the resemblance to the rose in their distant, which 
is their intended effect? 

19. But farther, let the ball have motion ; then the oo it 
generates will be that of a cylinder. Your have, perhaps, 
thought that pure Early English Architecture depended for 
its charm on visibility of construction. It depends for its 
charm altogether on the abstract harmony of groups of cylin- 
ders,* arbitrarily bent into mouldings, and arbitrarily associ- 


* All grandest effects in mouldings may be, and for the most part 
have been, obtained by rolls and cavettos of circular (segmental) sec- 
tion. More refined sections, as that of the fluting of a Doric shaft, are 
only of use near the eye and in beautiful stone ; and the pursuit of them 
was one of the many errors of later Gothic. The statement in the text 
that the mouldings, even of best time, ‘‘ have no real relation to con- 


300 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


ated as shafts, having no real relation to construction whatso- 
ever, and a theoretical relation so subtle that none of us had 
seen it, till Professor Willis worked it out for us. 

20. And now, proceeding to analysis of higher sculpture, 
you may have observed the importance I have attached to the 
porch of San Zenone, at Verona, by making it, among your 
standards, the first of the group which is to illustrate the sys- 
tem of sculpture and architecture founded on faith in a future 
life. . That porch, fortunately represented in the photograph, 
from which Plate I. has been engraved, under a clear and 
pleasant light, furnishes you with examples of sculpture of 
every kind from the flattest incised bas-relief to solid statues, 
both in marble and bronze. And the two points I have been 
pressing upon you are conclusively exhibited here, namely,— 
(1). That sculpture is essentially the production of a pleasant 
bossiness or roundness of surface ; (2) that the pleasantness of 
that bossy condition to the eye is irrespective of imitation on 
one side, and of structure on the other. 

21. (1.) Sculpture is essentially the production of a pleasant 
bossiness or roundness of surface. 

If you look from some distance at these two engravings of 
Greek coins, (place the book open so that you can see the op- 
posite plate three or four yards off,) you will find the relief on 
each of them simplifies itself into a pearl-like portion of a 
sphere, with exquisitely gradated light on its surface. When 
you look at them nearer, you will see that each smaller por- 
tion into which they are divided—cheek, or brow, or leaf, or 
tress of hair—resolves itself also into a rounded or undulated 
surface, pleasant by gradation of light. Every several sur- 
face is delightful in itself, as a shell, or a tuft of rounded 
moss, or the bossy masses of distant forest would be. That 
these intricately modulated masses present some resemblance 
to a girl’s face, such as the Syracusans imagined that of the 
water-goddess Arethusa, is entirely a secondary matter; the 


struction,” is scarcely strong enough: they in fact contend with, and 
deny the construction, their principal purpose seeming to be the con- 
cealment of the joints of the voussoirs. 





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OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS. 301 


primary condition is that the masses shall be beautifully 
rounded, and disposed with due discretion and order. 

22. (2.) It is difficult for you, at first, to feel this order and 
beauty of surface, apart from the imitation. But’ you can see 
there is a pretty disposition of, and relation between, the pro- 
jections of a fir-cone, though the studded spiral imitates noth- 
ing. Order exactly the same in kind, only much more com- 
plex ; and an abstract beauty of surface rendered definite by 
increase and decline of light—(for every curve of surface has 
its own luminous law, and the light and shade on a parabolic 
solid differs, specifically, from that on an elliptical or spheri- 
cal one)—it is the essential business of the sculptor to obtain ; 
as it is the essential business of a painter to get good colour, 
whether he imitates anything or not. Ata distance from the 
picture, or carving, where the things represented become ab- 
solutely unintelligible, we must yet be able to say, at a glance, 
“That is good painting, or good carving.” 

And you will be surprised to find, when you try the ex- 
periment, how much the eye must instinctively judge in this 
manner. ‘Take the front of San Zenone for instance, Plate I. 
You will find it impossible without a lens, to distinguish in 
the bronze gates, and in great part of the wall, anything that 
their bosses represent. You cannot tell whether the sculpture 
is of men, animals, or trees ; only you feel it to be composed 
of pleasant projecting masses ; you acknowledge that both 
gates and wall are, somehow, delightfully roughened ; and 
only afterwards, by slow degrees, can you make out what this 
roughness means ; nay, though here (Plate III.) I magnify * 
one of the bronze plates of the gate to a scale, which gives 
you the same advantage as if you saw it quite close, in the 
reality,—you may still be obliged to me for the information, 
that this boss represents the Madonna asleep in her little bed, 
and this smaller boss, the Infant Christ in His; and this at 


*Some of the most precious work done for me by my assistant Mr. 
Burgess, during the course of these lectures, consisted in making en- 
larged drawings from portions of photographs. Plate III. is engraved 
from a drawing of his, enlarged from the original photograph of which 
Plate I. is a reduction. 


302 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


the top, a cloud with an angel coming out of it, and these 
jagged bosses, two of the Three Kings, with their crowns on, 
looking up to the star, (which is intelligible enough I admit) ; 
but what this straggling, three-legged boss beneath signifies, 
I suppose neither you norI can tell, unless it be the shep- 
herd’s dog, who has come suddenly upon the Kings with their 
crowns on, and is greatly startled at them. 

23. Farther, and much more definitely, the pleasantness of 
the surface decoration is independent of structure ; that is to 
say, of any architectural requirement of stability. The greater 
part of the sculpture here is exclusively ornamentation of a 
flat wall, or of door panelling; only a small portion of the 
church front is thus treated, and the sculpture has no more to 
do with the form of the building than a piece of a lace veil 
would have, suspended beside its gates on a festal day ; the 
proportions of shaft and arch might be altered in a hundred 
different ways, without diminishing their stability; and the 
pillars would stand more safely on the ground than on the 
backs of these carved animals. 

24. I wish you especially to notice these points, because the 
false theory that ornamentation should be merely decorated 
structure is so pretty and plausible, that it is likely to take 
away your attention from the far more important abstract 
conditions of design. Structure should never be contradicted, 
and in the best buildings it is pleasantly exhibited and en- 
forced; in this very porch the joints of every stone are visible, 
and you will find me in the Fifth Lecture insisting on this 
clearness of its anatomy as a merit ; yet so independent is the 
mechanical structure of the true design, that when I begin my 
Lectures on Architecture, the first building I shall give you as 
a standard will be one in which the structure is wholly con- 
cealed. It will be the Baptistry of Florence, which is, in reality, 
as much a buttressed chapel with a vaulted roof, as the Chap- 
ter House of York—but round it, in order to conceal that 
buttressed structure, (not to decorate, observe, but to conceal) 
a flat external wall is raised ; simplifying the whole to a mere 
hexagonal box, like a wooden piece of Tunbridge ware, on the 
surface of which the eye and intellect are to be interested by 





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OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS. 303 


the relations of dimension and curve between pieces of en- 
erusting marble of different colours, which have no more to 
do with the real make of the building than the diaper of a 
Harlequin’s jacket has to do with his bones. 

25. The sense of abstract proportion, on which the enjoy- 
ment of such a piece of art entirely depends, is one of the 
sesthetic faculties which nothing can develop but time and ~ 
education. It belongs only to highly-trained nations ; and, 
among them, to their most strictly refined classes, though the 
germs of it are found, as part of their innate power, in every 
people capable of art. It has for the most part vanished at 
present from the English mind, in consequence of our eager 
desire for excitement, and for the kind of splendour that ex- 
hibits wealth, careless of dignity; so that, I suppose, there 
are very few now even of our best-trained Londoners who 
know the difference between the design of Whitehall and that 
of any modern club-house in Pall-mall. The order and har- 
mony which, in his enthusiastic account of the Theatre of 
Epidaurus, Pausanias insists on before beauty, can only be 
recognized by stern order and harmony in our daily lives ; and 
the perception of them is as little to be compelled, or taught 
suddenly, as the laws of still finer choice in the conception of 
dramatic incident which regulate poetic sculpture. 

26. And now, at last, I think, we can sketch out the sub- 
ject before us in a clear light. We have a structural art, 
divine, and human, of which the investigation comes under 
the general term, Anatomy ; whether the junctions or joints 
be in mountains, or in branches of trees, or in buildings, or 
in bones of animals. We have next a musical art, falling into 
two distinct divisions—one using colours, the other masses, 
for its elements of composition ; lastly, we have an imitative 
art, concerned with the representation of the outward appear- 
ances of things. And, for many reasons, I think it best to 
begin with imitative Sculpture ; that being defined as the art 
which, by the musical disposition of masses, imitates anything of 
which the imitation ts justly pleasant to us ; and does so in ac- 
cordance with structural laws having due reference to the ma- 
terials employed. 


304 ARATRA PHNTELICI. 


So that you see our task will involve the immediate inquiry 
what the things are of which the imitation is justly pleasant 
to us: what, in few words,—if we are to be occupied in the 
making of graven images—we ought to like to make images 
of. Secondly, after having determined its subject, what degree 
of imitation or likeness we ought to desire in our graven 
image; and lastly, under what limitations demanded by 
structure and material, such likeness may be obtained. 

These inquiries I shall endeavour to pursue with you to 
some practical conclusion, in my next four lectures, and in the 
sixth, I will briefly sketch the actual facts that have taken 
place in the development of sculpture by the two greatest 
schools of it that hitherto have existed in the world. 

27. The tenor of our next lecture then must be an inquiry 
into the real nature of Idolatry; that is to say, the invention 
and service of Idols: and, in the interval, may I commend to 
your own thoughts this question, not wholly irrelevant, yet 
which I cannot pursue; namely, whether the God to whom 
we have so habitually prayed for deliverance “from battle, 
murder, and sudden death,” 7s indeed, seeing that the present 
state of Christendom is the result of a thousand years’ pray- 
ing to that effect, “as the gods of the heathen who were but 
idols ;” or whether—(and observe, one or other of these things 
must be true)—whether our prayers to Him have been, by 
this much, worse than Idolatry ;—that heathen prayer was true 
prayer to false gods; and our prayers have been false prayers 
to the True One. 


LECTURE IL 
IDOLATRY. 


November, 1870. 


28. Brainnine with the simple conception of sculpture as 
the art of fiction in solid substance, we are now to consider 
what its subjects should be. What—having the gift of imag- 
ery—should we by preference endeavour to image? <A ques- 


IDOLATRY. 305 


tion which is, indeed, subordinate to the deeper one—why 
we should wish to image anything at all. 

29. Some years ago, having been always desirous that the 
education of women should begin in learning how to cook, I 
got leave, one day, for a little girl of eleven years old to ex- 
change, much to her satisfaction, her schoolroom for the 
kitchen. But as ill fortune would have it, there was some 
pastry toward, and she was left unadvisedly in command of 
some delicately rolled paste; whereof she made no pies, but 
an unlimited quantity of cats and mice. 

Now you may read the works of the gravest critics of art 
from end to end ; but you will find, at last, they can give you 
no other true account of the spirit of sculpture than that it is 
an irresistible human instinct for the making of cats and mice, 
and other imitable living creatures, in such permanent form 
that one may play with the images at leisure. 

Play with them, or love them, or fear them, or worship 
them. The cat may become the goddess Pasht, and the 
mouse, in the hand of the sculptured king, enforce his endur- 
ing words “és éué tis dpewy etoeBys eoTw;” but the great 
mimetic instinct underlies all such purpose; and is zooplastie, 
—life-shaping,—alike in the reverent and the impious. 

30. Is, I say, and has been, hitherto ; none of us dare say 
that it will be. I shall have to show you hereafter that the 
greater part of the technic energy of men, as yet, has indi- 
cated a kind of childhood ; and that the race becomes, if not 
more wise, at least more manly,* with every gained century. 
I can fancy that all this sculpturing and painting of ours may 
be looked back upon, in some distant time, as a kind of doll- 
making, and that the words of Sir Isaac Newton may be 
smiled at no more: only if will not be for stars that we desert 
our stone dolls, but for men. When the day comes, as come 
it must, in which we no more deface and defile God’s image 
in living clay, [am not sure that we shall any of us care so 
much for the images made of Him, in burnt clay. 

31. But, hitherto, the energy of growth in any people may 
be almost directly measured by their passion for imitative art ; 

* Glance forward at once to § 75, read it, and return to this. 


306 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


namely, for sculpture, or for the drama, which is living and 
speaking sculpture, or, as in Greece, for both ; and in national 
as in actual childhood, it is not merely the making, but the 
making-believe ; not merely the acting for the sake of the 
scene, but acting for the sake of acting, that is delightful. 
And, of the two mimetic arts, the drama, being more passion- 
ate, and involving conditions of greater excitement and lux 
ury, is usually in its excellence the sign of culminating 
strength in the people ; while fine sculpture, requiring always 
submission to severe law, is an unfailing proof of their being 
in early and active progress. There is no instance of fine 
sculpture being produced by a nation either torpid, weak, or in 
decadence. Their drama may gain in grace and wit; but their 
sculpture, in days of decline, is always base. 

32. If my little lady in the kitchen had been put in com- 
mand of colours, as well as of dough, and if the paste would 
have taken the colours, we may be sure her mice would have 
been painted brown, and her cats tortoise-shell; and this, 
partly indeed for the added delight and prettiness of colour 
itself, but more for the sake of absolute realization to her 
eyes and mind. Now all the early sculpture of the most ac- 
complished nations has been thus coloured, rudely or finely ; 
and, therefore, you see at once now necessary it is that we 
should keep the term ‘“ graphic ” for imitative art generally ; 
since no separation can at first be made between carving and 
painting, with reference to the mental powers exerted in, or 
addressed by, them. In the earliest known art of the world, 
a reindeer hunt may be scratched in outline on the flat side 
of a clean-picked bone, and a reindeer’s head carved out of 
the end of it; both these are flint-knife work, and, strictly 
speaking, sculpture : but the scratched outline is the begin- 
ning of drawing, and the carved head of sculpture proper. 
When the spaces enclosed by the scratched outline are filled 
with colour, the colouring soon becomes a principal means of 
effect ; so that, in the engraving of an Egyptian-colour bas- 
relief (S. 101), Rosellini has been content to miss the outlin- 
ing incisions altogether, and represent it as a painting only. 
Its proper definition is, “painting accented by sculpture ;” 


IDOLATRY. 307 


on the other hand, in solid coloured statues,—Dresden china 
figures, for example,—we have pretty sculpture accented by 
painting ; the mental purpose in both kinds of art being to 
obtain the utmost degree of realization possible, and the 
ocular impression being the same, whether the delineation is 
obtained by engraving or painting. for, as I pointed out to 
you in my fifth lecture, everything is seen by the eye ag 
patches of colour, and of colour only ; a fact which the Greeks 
knew well; so that when it becomes a question in the dialogue 
of Minos, “ rive dvre TH Oe Opatat Ta OpwHyeva,” the answer is 
“aicOyoet tatty TH Sia tly 6pParpadv SyrAoloy Wty Ta vpa- 
para,”’—- What kind of power is the sight with which we see 
things? It is that sense which, through the eyes, can reveal 
colours to us.” 

33. And now observe that while the graphic arts begin in 
the mere mimetic effort, they proceed, as they obtain more 
perfect realization, to act under the influence of a stronger 
and higher instinct. They begin by scratching the reindeer, 
the most interesting object of sight. But presently, as the 
human creature rises in scale of intellect, it proceeds to scratch, 
not the most interesting object of sight only, but the most in- 
teresting object of imagination; not the reindeer, but the 
Maker and Giver of thc reindeer. And the second great condi- 
tion for the advance of the art of sculpture is that the race should 
possess, in addition to the mimetic instinct, the realistic or 
idolizing instinct ; the desire to see as substantial the powers 
that are unseen, and bring near those that are far off, and to 
possess and cherish those that are strange. To make in some 
way tangible and visible the nature of the gods—to illustrate 
and explain it by symbols ; to bring the immortals out of the 
recesses of the clouds, and make them Penates ; to bring back 
the dead from darkness, and make them Lares. 

34. Our conception of this tremendous and universal human 
passion has been altogether narrowed by the current idea that 
Pagan religious art consisted only, or chiefly, in giving person- 
ality to the gods. The personality was never doubted ; it was 
visibility, interpretation, and possession that the hearts of 
men sought. Possession, first of all—the getting hold of 


303 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


some hewn log of wild olive-wood that would fall on its knees 
if it was pulled from its pedestal—and, afterwards, slowly 
clearing manifestation ; the exactly right expression is used 
iu Lucian’s dream,—®eidias éderEe rov Aia ; “ Showed * Zeus ;” 
manifested him, nay, in a certain sense, brought forth, o1 
created, as you have it, in Anacreon’s ode to the Rose, of the 
birth of Athena herself— 


moAenokAovov tT ‘“AOnvyv 
Kopupys edeuxvue ZLevs. 


But I will translate the passage from Lucian to you at length 
—-it is in every way profitable. 

35. “There came to me, in the healing} night, a divine 
dream, so clear that it missed nothing of the truth itself; yes, 
and still after all this time, the shapes of what I saw remain 
in my sight, and the sound of what I heard dwells in my 
ears ’-—(note the lovely sense of €vavAos—the sound being as 
of a stream passing always by in the same channel,—“ so dis- 
tinct was everything to me. Two women laid hold of my 
hands and pulled me, each towards herself, so violently, that 
I had like to have been pulled asunder; and they cried out 
against one another,—-the one, that she was resolved to have 
me to herself, being indeed her own, and the other that it was 
vain for her to claim what belonged to others ;—and the one 
who first claimed me for her own was like a hard worker, and 
had strength as a man’s; and her hair was dusty, and her 
hand full of horny places, and her dress fastened tight about 
her, and the folds of it loaded with white marble-dust, so that 
she looked just as my uncle used to look when he was filing 
stones : but the other was pleasant in features, and delicate in 
form, and orderly in her dress ; and so in the end, they left 


* There is a primary and vulgar sense of ‘‘exhibited” in Lucian’s 
mind; but the higher meaning is involved in it. 

+ In the Greek, ‘‘ ambrosial.’’ Recollect always that ambrosia, as food 
of gods, is the continual restorer of strength ; that all food is ambrosial 
when it nourishes, and that the night is called ‘* ambrosial ” because it 
restores strength to the soul through its peace, as, in the 23rd Psalm, 
the stillness of waters. 


IDOLATRY. 309 


it to me to decide, after hearing what they had to say, with 
which of them I would go; and first the hard featured and 
masculine one spoke :— 

36. ‘* Dear child, Iam the Art of Image-sculpture, which 
yesterday you began to learn ; and Iam as one of your own 
people, and of your house, for your grandfather, (and she 
named my mother’s father) ‘was a stone-cutter; and both 
your uncles had good name through me: and if you will keep 
yourself well clear of the sillinesses and fluent follies that come 
from this creature,’ (and she pointed to the other woman) ‘and 
will follow me, and live with me, first of all, you shall be 
brought up as a man should be, and have strong shoulders; 
and, besides that, you shall be kept well quit of all restless 
desires, and you shall never be obliged to go away into any 
foreign places, leaving your own country and the people of 
your house ; neither shall all men praise you for your talk.* 
And you must not despise this rude serviceableness of my 
body, neither this meanness of my dusty dress ; for, pushing 
on in their strength from such things as these, that great 
Phidias revealed Zeus, and Polyclitus wrought out Hera, and 
Myron was praised, and Praxiteles marvelled at: therefore 
are these men worshipped with the gods.’” 

37. There is a beautiful ambiguity in the use of the prep- 
osition with the genitive in this last sentence. ‘Pushing on 
from these things” means indeed, justly, that the sculptors 
rose from a mean state to a noble one ; but not as leaving the 
mean state ;—not as, from a hard life, attaining to a soft one, 
—but as being helped and strengthened by the rough life to 
do what was greatest. Again, ‘‘ worshipped with the gods” 
does not mean that they are thought of as in any sense equal 
to, or like to, the gods, but as being on the side of the gods 
against what is base and ungodly ; and that the kind of worth 
which is in them is therefore indeed worshipful, as having its 
source with the gods. Finally, observe that every one of the 
expressions, used of the four sculptors, is definitely the best 

* T have italicised this final promise of blessedness, given by the 


noble Spirit of Workmanship. Compare Carlyles 5th Latter-day 
pamphlet, throughout ; but especially pp. 12-14, in the first edition. 


810 ARATRA PENTELICTI. 


that Lucian could have chosen. Phidias carved like one who 
had seen Zeus, and had only to reveal him; Polyclitus, in 
labour of intellect, completed his sculpture by just law, and 
wrought out Hera; Myron was of all most praised, because he 
did best what pleased the vulgar; and Praxiteles, the most 
wondered at or admired, because he bestowed utmost exqui- 
siteness of beauty. 

38. Iam sorry not to go on with the dream ; the more re- 
fined lady, as you may remember, is liberal or gentlemanly 
Education, and prevails at last; so that Lucian becomes an 
author instead of a sculptor, I think to his own regret, though 
to our present benefit. One more passage of his I must refer 
you to, as illustrative of the point before us; the description 
of the temple of the Syrian Hieropolis, where he explains the 
absence of the images of the sun and moon. “In the temple 
itself,” he says, ‘‘on the left hand as one goes in, there is set 
first the throne of the sun ; but no form of him is thereon, for 
of these two powers alone, the sun and the moon, they show 
no carved images. And I also learned why this is their law, 
for they say that it is permissible, indeed, to make of the 
other gods, graven images, since the forms of them are not 
visible to all men. But Helios and Selenaia are everywhere 
clear-bright, and all men behold them ; what need is there 
therefore for sculptured work of these, who appear in the 
air?” 

39. This, then, is the second instinct necessary to sculpt- 
ure; the desire for the manifestation, description, and com- 
panionship of unknown powers ; and for possession of a bodily 
substance—the ‘bronze Strasbourg,” which you can embrace, 
and hang immortelles on the head of—instead of an abstract 
idea. But if you get nothing more in the depth of the 
national mind than these two feelings, the mimetic and idol- 
izing instincts, there may be still no progress possible for the 
arts except in delicacy of manipulation and accumulative 
caprice of design. You must have not only the idolizing in- 
stinet, but an 70s which chooses the right thing to idolize! 
Else, you will get states of art like those in China or India, 
non-progressive, and in great part diseased and frightful, 


IDOLATRY. 311 


being wrought under the influence of foolish terror, or foolish 
admiration. So that a third condition, completing and con- 
firming both the others, must exist in order to the develop- 
ment of the creative power. 

40. This third condition is that the heart of the nation 
shall be set on the discovery of just or equal law, and shall be 
from day to day developing that law more perfectly. The 
Greek school of sculpture is formed during, and in conse- 
quence of, the national effort to discover the nature of justice ; 
the Tuscan, during, and in consequence of, the national effort 
to discover the nature of justification. I assert to you at 
present briefly, what will, I hope, be the subject of prolonged 
illustration hereafter. 

41. Now when a nation with mimetic instinct and imagina- 
tive longing is also thus occupied earnestly in the discovery 
of Ethic law, that effort gradually brings precision and trutin 
into all its manual acts; and the physical progress of sculpt- 
ure as in the Greek, so in the Tuscan, school, consists in 
gradually limiting what was before indefinite, in verifying 
what was inaccurate, and in hwmanizing what was monstrous. 
I might perhaps content you by showing these external phe- 
nomena, and by dwelling simply on the increasing desire of 
naturalness, which compels, in every successive decade of 
years, literally, in the sculptured images, the mimicked bones 
to come together, bone to his bone; and the flesh to come 
up upon them, until from a flattened and pinched handful of 
clay, respecting which you may gravely question whether it 
~ was intended for a human form at all ;—by slow degrees, and 
added touch to touch, in increasing consciousness of the 
bodily truth,—at last the Aphrodite of Melos stands before 
you, a perfect woman. But all that search for physical accu- 
racy is merely the external operation, in the arts, of the seek- 
ing for truth in the inner soul; it is impossible without that 
higher effort, and the demonstration of it would be worse 
than useless to you, unless I made you aware at the same time 
of its spiritual cause. 

42. Observe farther ; the increasing truth in representation 
is co-relative with increasing beauty in the thing to be repre- 


312 ARATRA PENTELICI,. 


sented. The pursuit of justice which regulates the imitative 
effort, regulates also the development of the race into dignity 
of person, as of mind; and their culminating art-skill attains 
the grasp of entire truth at the moment when the truth be- 
comes most lovely. And then, ideal sculpture may go on 
safely into portraiture. But I shall not touch on the subject 
of portrait sculpture to-day ; it introduces many questions of 
detail, and must be a matter for subsequent consideration, 

43. These then are the three great passions which are con- 
cerned in true sculpture. I cannot find better, or, at least, 
more easily remembered, names for them than “ the Instincts 
of Mimicry, Idolatry, and Discipline ;” meaning, by the last, 
the desire of equity and wholesome restraint, in all acts and 
works of life. Now of these, there is no question but that the 
love of Mimicry is natural and right, and the love of Disci- 
pline is natural and right. But it looks a grave question 
whether the yearning for Idolatry, (the desire of companion- 
ship with images,) is right. Whether, indeed, if such an in- 
stinct be essential to good sculpture, the art founded on it can 
possibly be “fine” art. 

44. I must now beg for your close attention, because I have 
to point out distinctions in modes of conception which will 
appear trivial to you, unless accurately understood; but of 
an importance in the history of art which cannot be over- 
rated. 

When the populace of Paris adorned the statue of Stras- 
bourg with immortelles, none, even the simplest of the pious 
decorators, would suppose that the city of Strasbourg itself, 
or any spirit or ghost of the city, was actually there, sitting in 
the Place de la Concorde. The figure was delightful to them 
as a visible nucleus for their fond thoughts about Strasbourg ; 
but never for a moment supposed to be Strasbourg. 

Similarly, they might have taken delight in a statue pur- 
porting to represent a river instead of a city,—the Rhine, or 
Garonne, suppose,—and have been tvuched with strong 
emotion in looking at it, if the real river were dear to them, 
and yet never think for an instant that the statue was the 
river. 


IDOLATRY. 313 


And yet again, similarly, but much more distinctly, they 
might take delight in the beautiful image of a god, because it 
gathered and perpetuated their thoughts about that god ; 
and yet never suppose, nor be capable of being deceived by 
aly arguments into supposing, that the statue was the god. 

On the other hand, if a meteoric stone fell from the sky in 
the sight of a savage, and he picked it up hot, he would most 
probably lay it aside in some, to him, sacred place, and be- 
lieve the stone itself to be a kind of god, and offer prayer and 
sacrifice to it. 

dn like manner, any other strange or terrifying object, 
such, for instance, as a powerfully noxious animal or plant, 
he would be apt to regard in the same way ; and very pos- 
sibly also construct for himself frightful idols of some kind, 
calculated to produce upon him a vague impression of their 
being alive ; whose imaginary anger he might deprecate or 
avert with sacrifice, although incapable of conceiving in them 
any one attribute of exalted intellectual or moral nature. 

45. If you will now refer to § 52-59 of my Introductory 
Lectures, you will find this distinction between a resolute 
conception, recognized for such, and an involuntary appre- 
hension of spiritual existence, already insisted on at some 
length. And you will see more and more clearly as we pro- 
ceed, that the deliberate and intellectually commanded con- 
ception is not idolatrous in any evil sense whatever, but is one 
of the grandest and wholesomest functions of the human soul ; 
and that the essence of evil idolatry begins only in the idea 
or belief of a real presence of any kind, in a thing in which 
there is no such presence. 

46. I need not say that the harm of the idolatry must de- 
pend on the certainty of the negative. If there be a real 
presence in a pillar of cloud, in an unconsuming flame, or in 
a still small voice, it is no sin to bow down before these. 

But, as matter of historical fact, the idea of such presence 
has generally been both ignoble and false, and confined to 
nations of inferior race, who are often condemned to remain 
for ages in conditions of vile terror, destitute of thought. 
Nearly all Indian architecture and Chinese design arise out 


314 ARATRA PENTELICL. 


of such a state: so also, though in a less gross degree, Nin- 
evite and Phoenician art, early Irish, and Scandinavian ; the 
latter, however, with vital elements of high intellect mingled 
in it from the first. 

But the greatest races are never grossly subject to such 
terror, even in their childhood, and the course of their minds 
is broadly divisible into three distinct stages. 

47. (I.) In their infancy they begin to imitate the real 
animals about them, as my little girl made the cats and mice, 
but with an undercurrent of partial superstition—a sense that 
there must be more in the creatures than they can see ; also 
they catch up vividly any of the fancies of the baser nations 
round them, and repeat these more or less apishly, yet rapidly 
naturalizing and beautifying them. They then connect all 
kinds of shapes together, compounding meanings out of the 
old chimeras, and inventing new ones with the speed of a 
running wild-fire ; but always getting more of man into their 
images, and admitting less of monster or brute; their own 
characters, meanwhile, expanding and purging themselves, 
and shaking off the feverish fancy, as springing flowers 
shake the earth off their stalks. 

48. (II.) In the second stage, being now themselves perfect 
men and women, they reach the conception of true and great 
gods as existent in the universe; and absolutely cease to 
think of them as in any wise present in statues or images; 
but they have now learned to make these statues beautifully 
human, and to surround them with attributes that may con- 
centrate their thoughts of the gods. This is, in Greece, ac- 
curately the Pindaric time, just a little preceding the Phidian ; 
the Phidian is already dimmed with a faint shadow of infidel- 
ity ; still, the Olympic Zeus may be taken as a sufficiently 
central type of a statue which was no more supposed to be 
Zeus, than the gold or elephants’ tusks it was made of ; but 
in which the most splendid powers of human art were ex- 
hausted in representing a believed and honoured God to the 
happy and holy imagination of a sincerely religious people. 

49, (III.) The third stage of national existence follows, in 
which, the imagination having now done its utmost, and be- 


IDOLATRY. 315 


ing partly restrained by the sanctities of tradition, which 
permit no farther change in the conceptions previously 
created, begins to be superseded by logical deduction and 
scientific investigation. At the same moment, the elder ar- 
tists having done all that is possible in realizing the national 
conceptions of the Gods, the younger ones, forbidden to 
change the scheme of existing representations, and incapable 
of doing anything better in that kind, betake themselves to 
refine and decorate the old ideas with more attractive skill, 
Their aims are thus more and more limited to manual dexter- 
ity, and their fancy paralwved. Also, in the course of centu- 
ries, the methods of every art continually improving, and be- 
ing made subjects of popular inquiry, praise is now to be got, 
for eminence in these, from the whole mob of the nation ; 
whereas intellectual design can never be discerned but by the 
few. So thatin this third zra we find every kind of imitative 
and vulgar dexterity more and more cultivated ; while design 
and imagination are every day less cared for, and less possible. 

50. Meanwhile, as I have just said, the leading minds in 
literature and science become continually more logical and 
investigative ; and, once that they are established in the 
habit of testing facts accurately, a very few years are enough 
to convince all the strongest thinkers that the old imaginative 
religion is untenable, and cannot any longer be honestly 
taught in its fixed traditional form, except by ignorant per- 
sons. And at this point the fate of the people absolutely de- 
pends on the degree of moral strength into which their hearts 
have been already trained. If it be a strong, industrious, 
chaste, and honest race, the taking its old gods, or at least 
the old forms of them, away from it, will indeed make it 
deeply sorrowful and amazed ; but will in no whit shake its 
-will, nor alter its practice. ixceptional persons, naturally 
disposed to become drunkards, harlots, and cheats, but who 
had been previously restrained from indulging these disposi- 
tions by their fear of God, will, of course, break out into open 
vice, when that fear is removed. But the heads of the fami- 
lies of the people, instructed in the pure habits and perfect 
delights of an honest life, and to whom the thought of a 


516 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


Father in heaven had been a comfort, not a restraint, will 
assuredly not seek relief from the discomfort of their orphan- 
age by becoming uncharitable and vile. Also the high leaders 
of their thought gather their whole strength together in the 
gloom ; and at the first entrance of this valley of the Shadow 
of Death, look their new enemy full in the eyeless face of him, 
and subdue him, and his terror, under their feet. ‘‘ Metus 
omnes, et inexorabile fatum, . . . strepitumque Acherontis 
avari.” This is the condition of national soul expressed by 
the art, and the words, of Holbein, Durer, Shakspeare, Pope, 
and Goethe. 

51. But if the people, at the moment when the trial of 
darkness approaches, be not confirmed in moral character, 
but are only maintaining a superficial virtue by the aid of 
a spectral religion; the moment the staff of their faith is 
broken, the character of the race falls like a climbing plant 
cut from its hold: then all the earthliest vices attack it as it 
lies in the dust; every form of sensual and insane sin is 
developed, and half a century is sometimes enough to close, 
in hopeless shame, the career of the nation in hterature, art, 
and war. 

52. “Notably, within the last hundred years, all religion has 
perished from the practically active national mind of France 
and England. No statesman in the senate of either country 
would dare to use a sentence out of their acceptedly divine 
Revelation, as having now a literal authority over them for 
their guidance, or even a suggestive wisdom for their con- 
templation. England, especially, has cast her Bible full in 
the face of her former God; and proclaimed, with open 
challenge to Him, her resolved worship of His declared 
enemy, Mammon. All the arts, therefore, founded on relig- 
ion, and sculpture chiefly, are here in England effete and 
corrupt, to a degree which arts never were hitherto in the 
history of mankind: and it is possible to show you the con- 
dition of sculpture living, and sculpture dead, in accurate op- 
position, by simply comparing the nascent Pisan school in Italy 
with the existing school in England. 

53. You were perhaps surprised at my placing in your 


IDOLATRY. BLT 


educational series, as a type of original Italian sculpture, the 
pulpit by Niccola Pisano in the Duomo of Siena. I would 
rather, had it been possible, have given the pulpit by Giovanni 
Pisano in the Duomo of Pisa; but that pulpit is dispersed in 
fragments through the upper galleries of the Duomo, and the 
cloister of the Campo Santo; and the casts of its fragments 
now put together at Kensington are too coarse to be of use to 
you. You may partly judge, however, of the method of their 
execution by the eagle’s head, which I have sketched from the 
marble in the Campo Santo (Edu., No. 113), and the lioness 
with her cubs, (Edu., No. 103, more carefully studied at 
Siena) ; and I will get you other illustrations in due time. 
Meanwhile, I want you to compare the main purpose of the 
Cathedral of Pisa, and its associated Bell Tower, Baptistery, 
and Holy Field, with the main purpose of the principal build- 
ing lately raised for the people of London. In these days, we 
indeed desire no cathedrals; but we have constructed an 
enormous and costly edifice, which, in claiming educational 
influence over the whole London populace, and middle class, 
is verily the Metropolitan cathedral of this century,—the 
Crystal Palace. 

54. It was proclaimed, at its erection, an example of a newly 
discovered style of architecture, greater than any hitherto 
known,—our best popular writers, in their enthusiasm, de- 
scribing it as an edifice of Fairyland. You are nevertheless to 
observe that this novel production of fairy enchantment is 
destitute of every kind of sculpture, except the bosses pro- 
duced by the heads of nails and rivets; while the Duomo of 
Pisa, in the wreathen work of its doors, in the foliage of its 
capitals, inlaid colour designs of its fagade, embossed panels 
of its baptistery font, and figure sculpture of its two pulpits, 
contained the germ of a school of sculpture which was to 
maintain, through a subsequent period of four hundred years, 
the greatest power yet reached by the arts of the world in 
description of Form, and expression of Thought. 

55. Now it is easy to show you the essential cause of the 
vast discrepancy in the character of these two buildings. 

In the vault of the apse of the Duomo of Pisa, was a 


318 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


colossal image of Christ, in coloured mosaic, bearing to the 
temple, as nearly as possible, the relation which the statue of 
Athena bore to the Parthenon ; and in the same manner, con- 
centrating the imagination of the Pisan on the attributes of the 
God in whom he believed. 

In precisely the same position with respect to the nave of 
the building, but of larger size, as proportioned to the three 
or four times greater scale of the whole, a colossal piece of 
sculpture was placed by English designers, at the extremity 
of the Crystal Palace, in preparation for their solemnities in 
honour of the birthday of Christ, in December, 1867 or 1868, 

That piece of sculpture was the face of the clown in a 
pantomime, some twelve feet high from brow to chin, which 
face, being moved by the mechanism which is our pride, every 
half minute opened its mouth from ear to ear, showed its 
teeth, and revolved its eyes, the force of these periodical 
seasons of expression being increased and explained by the 
illuminated inscription underneath ‘‘ Here we are again.” 

56. When it is assumed, and with too good reason, that 
the mind of the English populace is to be addressed, in the 
principal Sacred Festival of its year, by sculpture such as this, 
I need scarcely point out to you that the hope is absolutely 
futile of advancing their intelligence by collecting within this ~ 
building, (itself devoid absolutely of every kind of art, and so 
vilely constructed that those who traverse it are continually in 
danger of falling over the cross-bars that bind it together) 
exainples of sculpture filched indiscriminately from the past 
work, bad and good, of Turks, Greeks, Romans, Moors, and 
Christians, miscoloured, misplaced, and misinterpreted ; * 
here thrust into unseemly corners, and there mortised together 
into mere confusion of heterogeneous obstacle ; pronouncing 
itself hourly more intolerable in weariness, until any kind of 


relief is sought from it in steam wheelbarrows or cheap toy- 

* “ Falsely represented,” would be the better expression, In the cast 
of the tomb of Queen Eleanor, for a single instance, the Gothic foliage 
of which one essential virtue is its change over every shield, is repre- 
sented by a repetition of casts from one mould, of which the design it- 
self is entirely conjectural. 


IDOLATRY. d19 


shops; and most of all in beer and meat, the corks and the 
bones being dropped through the chinks in the damp deal 
flooring of the English Fairy Palace. 

57, But you will probably think me unjust in assuming 
that a building prepared only for the amusement of the peo- 
ple can typically represent the architecture or sculpture of 
modern England. You may urge, that I ought rather to de- 
scribe the qualities of the refined sculpture which is executed 
in large quantities for private persons belonging to the upper 
classes, and for sepulchral and memorial purposes. But I 
could not now criticise that sculpture with any power of con- 
viction to you, because I have not yet stated to you the prin- 
ciples of good sculpture in general. I will, however, in some 
points, tell you the facts by anticipation. 

58. We have much excellent portrait sculpture ; but portrait 
sculpture, which is nothing more, is always third-rate work, 
even when produced by men of genius ;—nor does it in the 
least require men of genius to produce it. To paint a por- 
trait, indeed, implies the very highest gifts of painting ; but — 
any man, of ordinary patience and artistic feeling, can carve a 
satisfactory bust. 

59. Of our powers in historian sculpture, I am, without 
question, just, in taking for sufficient evidence the monuments 
we have erected to our two greatest heroes by sea and land ; 
namely, the Nelson Column, and the statue of the Duke bs 
Wellington opposite Apsley House. Nor will you, I hope, 
think me severe,—certainly, whatever you may think me, I 
am using only the most temperate language, in saying of both 
these monuments, that they are absolutely devoid of high 
sculptural merit. But, consider how much is involved in the 
fact thus dispassionately stated, respecting the two monu- 
ments in the principal places of our capital, to our two great- 
est heroes. 

60. Remember that we have before our eyes, as subjects of 
perpetual study and thought, the art of all the world for three 
thousand years past: especially, we have the best sculpture 
of Greece, for example of bodily perfection ; the best of Rome, 
for example of character in portraiture ; the best of Florence, 


320 ARATRA PENTELICT. 


for example of romantic passion: we have unlimited access 
to books and other sources of instruction ; we have the most 
perfect scientific illustrations of anatomy, both human and 
comparative ; and, we haye bribes for the reward of success, 
large, in the proportion of at least twenty to one, as compared 
with those offered to the artists of any other period. And 
with all these advantages, and the stimulus also of fame car- 
ried instantly by the press to the remotest corners of Europe, 
the best efforts we can make, on the grandest of oceasions, re- 
sult in work which it is impossible in any one particular to 
praise. 

Now consider for yourselves what an intensity of the nega- 
tion of the faculty of sculpture this implies in the national 
mind! What measures can be assigned to the gulf of inca- 
pacity, which can deliberately swallow up in the gorge of it 
the teaching and example of three thousand years, and pro- 
duce as the result of that instruction, what it is courteous to 
eall “ nothing ?” 

61. That is the conclusion at which we arrive, on the evi- 
dence presented by our historical sculpture. To complete the 
measure of ourselves, we must cndeavour to estimate the rank 
of the two opposite schools of sculpture employed by us in 
the nominal service of religion, and in the actual service of 
vice. 

I am aware of no statue of Christ, nor of any apostle of 
Christ, nor of any scene related in the New Testament, pro- 
duced by us within the last three hundred years, which has 
possessed even superficial merit enough to attract public at- 
tention. 

Whereas the steadily immoral effect of the formative art 
which we learn, more or less apishly, from the French schools, 
and employ, but too gladly, in manufacturing articles for the 
amusement of the luxurious classes, must be ranked as one 
of the chief instruments used by joyful fiends and angry fates, 
for the ruin of our civilization. 

If, after I have set before you the nature and principles of 
true sculpture, in Athens, Pisa, and Florence, you reconsider 
these facts,—(which you will then at once recognize as such), 


IDOLATRY. 321 


—you will find that they absolutely justify my assertion that 
the state of sculpture in modern England, as compared with 
that of the great Ancients, is literally one of corrupt and dis- 
honourable death, as opposed to bright and fameful life. 

62. And now, will you bear with me, while I tell you finally 
why this is so? 

The cause with which you are personally concerned is your 
own frivolity ; though essentially this 1s not your fault, but 
that of the system of your early training. But the fact re- 
mains the same, that: here, in Oxford, you, & chosen body of 
English youth, in no wise care for the history of your coun- 
try, for its present dangers, or its present duties. You still, 
like children of seven or eight years old, are interested only in 
bats, balls, and oars: nay, including with you the students of 
Germany and France, it is certain that the general body of 
modern Kuropean youth have their minds occupied more seri- 
ously by the sculpture and painting of the bowls of their 
tobacco-pipes, than by all the divinest workmanship and pas- 
sionate imagination of Greece, Rome, and Medizeval Chris- 
tendom. . 

63. But the elementary causes, both of this frivolity in you, 
and of worse than frivolity in older persons, are the two forms 
of deadly Idolatry which are now all but universal in Ene- 
land. 

The first of these is the worship of the Eidolon, or Phan- 
tasm of Wealth ; worship of which you will find the nature 
partly examined in the 37th paragraph of my Munera Pul- 
veris ; but which is briefly to be defined as the servile appre- 
hension of an active power in Money, and the submission to 
it as the God of our life. 

64. The second elementary cause of the loss of our nobly 
imaginative faculty, is the worship of the Letter, instead of the 
Spirit, in what we chiefly accept as the ordinance and teach- . 
ing of Deity ; and the apprehension of a healing sacredness in 
the act of reading the Book whose primal commands we re- 
fuse to obey. 

No feather idol of Polynesia was ever a sign of a more 
shameful idolatry, than the modern notion in the minds of 


322 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


certainly the majority of English religions persons, that the 
Word of God, by which the heavens were of old, and the 
earth, standing out of the water and in the water,—the Word 
of God which came to the prophets, and comes still for ever to 
all who will hear it, (and to many who will forbear) ; and 
which, called Faithful and True, is to lead forth, in the judg- 
ment, the armies of heaven,—that this ‘‘ Word of God” may 
yet be bound at our pleasure in morocco, and carried about 
in a young lady’s pocket, with tasselled ribands to mark the 
passages she most approves of. 

65. Gentlemen, there has hitherto been seen no instance, 
and England is little likely to give the unexampled spectacle, 
of a country successful in the noble arts, yet in which the 
youths were frivolous, the maidens falsely religious, the men, 
slaves of money, and the matrons, of vanity. Not from all the 
marble of the hills of Luni will such a people ever shape one 
statue that may stand nobly against the sky; not from all 
the treasures bequeathed to them by the great dead, will they 
gather, for their own descendants, any inheritance but shame. 





LECTURE Il. 
IMAGINATION. 


November, 1870. 


66. Tue principal object of the preceding lecture na I 
choose rather to incur your blame for tediousness in repeat- 
ing, than for obscurity in defining it), was to enforce the dis- 
tinction between the ignoble and false phase of Idolatry, which 
consists in the attribution of a spiritual power to a material 
thing ; and the noble and truth-seeking phase of it, to which 
I shall in these lectures* give the general term of Imagina- 


*T shall be obliged in future lectures, as hitherto in my other writ- 
ings, to use the terms, Idolatry and Imagination in a more comprehen- 
sive sense; but here I use them for convenience sake, limitedly, to 
avoid the continual occurrence of the terms, noble and ignoble, or false 
and true, with reference to modes of conception. 


IMAGINATION. 









. — ee oe los oly 
Se 
Eo Aa eo bee 
pana Pe * 


A mah. = ee settee, Sy 3 dai Mes 
ate: f Viki AA cod . e. Sa ey Nol, Sable 












; : ‘ 
Sipe elahaise 2 . a> cae [lhe ta Vee poo ie a ay cet tyes aT 
Pena Hebviad = A rea Hy ¥ +> Pe wae an ren Tee Pedea > ms 
Saenaggeah y Wee boi > be SNe ep Oe gv pou ny oe 
Fe RP ri Ae / gone 4 Morey vite = oe / ited pe ea Ve mm 
te Hee ain i> é frorctyy ¥ tar oes ate Dt Mewet, « 
i ne: : aie) ' SF o¢ - \ ere re, 
As Athos ome: Ker set & ogee get . ae Oe Ry ery ¢ROOVS 
\ DY Ge Gah a oxte oar Ate te ee 78 . Si gel AES RA Ror Aes. y's 
. 4 : A. Ve - 
! Gap ps dee Pp her oe he et “ly ~~ = A, SAL BBB PAG Ws ° i 
‘cow v. ing. Lente | Pay “oar Nh, ete Es im Pint’ a a nee 
bape ny ae 4: an % ’ _. Famed —i ae SC i . 
1aitirne i Ae sols RE AAEM May Sih yw Tp is Sar Celle Ra eal ey > - “gt 
£ gare ¥ neh pat tah wary e hy eet 7 TmAats we o es 
bee oF seam Ae ey eer Ss. Se Se ed ah ee . Bue ~ 
4 - 
s 





IMAGINATION. 325 


tion ;—that is to say, the invention of material symbols which 
may lead us to contemplate the character and nature of gods, 
spirits, or abstract virtues and powers, without in the least 
implying the actual presence of such Beings among us, or 
even their possession, in reality, of the forms we attribute to 
them. 

67. For instance, in the ordinarily received Greek type of 
Athena, on vases of the Phidian time (sufficiently represented 
in the opposite woodcut), no Greek would have supposed the 
vase on which this was painted to be itself Athena, nor to con- 
tain Athena inside of it, as the Arabian fisherman’s casket 
contained the genie; neither did he think that this rude 
black painting, done at speed as the potter’s fancy urged his 
hand, represented anything like the form or aspect of the 
Goddess herself. Nor would he have thought so, even had 
the image been ever so beautifully wrought. The goddess 
might, indeed, visibly appear under the form of an armed 
virgin, as she might under that of a hawk or a swallow, when 
it pleased her to give such manifestation of her presence ; but 
it did not, therefore, follow that she was constantly invested 
with any of these forms, or that the best which human skill 
could, even by her own aid, picture of her, was, indeed, a 
likeness of her. The real use, at all events, of this rude 
image, was only to signify to the eye and heart the facts of 
the existence, in some manner, of a Spirit of wisdom, perfect 
in gentleness, irresistible in anger ; having also physical do- 
minion over the air which is the life and breadth of all creat- 
ures, and clothed, to human eyes, with eis of fiery cloud, and 
raiment of falling dew. 

68. In the yet more abstract conception of the Spirit of 
agriculture, in which the wings of the chariot represent the 
winds of spring, and its crested dragons are originally a mere 
type of the seed with its twisted root piercing the ground, 
and sharp-edged leaves rising above it; we are in still less 
danger of mistaking the symbol for the presumed form of an 
actual Person. But I must, with persistence, beg of you to 
observe that in all the noble actions of imagination in this 
kind, the distinction from idolatry consists, not in the denial of 


326 ARATRA PHNTEHLICT. 


the being, or presence of the Spirit, but only in the due recog. 
nition of our human incapacity to conceive the one, or compel 
the other. 


| WS 





Fra. 3. 


69. Farther—and for this statement I claim your attention 
still more earnestly. As no nation has ever attained real 
ereatness during periods in which it was subject to any condi- 
tion of Idolatry, so no nation has ever attained or persevered 
in greatness, except in reaching and maintaining a passionate 
Imagination of a spiritual estate higher than that of men ; and 
of spiritual creatures nobler than men, having a quite real and 
personal existence, however imperfectly apprehended by us. 


IMAGINATION. 327 


And all the arts of the present age deserving to be included 
under the name of sculpture have been degraded by us, and 
all principles of just policy have vanished from us,—and _ that 
totally,—for this double reason ; that we are on one side, given 
up to idolatries of the most servile kind, as I showed you in 
the close of the last lecture,—while, on the other hand, we have 
absolutely ceased from the exercise of faithful imagination ; 
and the only remnants of the desire of truth which remain in 
us have been corrupted into a prurient itch to discover the 
origin of life in the nature of the dust, and prove that the 
source of the order of the universe is the accidental concurrence 
of its atoms. 

70. Under these two calamities of our time, the art of sculpt- 
ure has perished more totally than any other, because the 
object of that art is exclusively the representation of form as 
the exponent of life. It is essentially concerned only with the 
human form, which is the exponent of the highest life we 
know; and with all subordinate forms only as they exhibit 
conditions of vital power which have some certain relation to 
humanity. It deals with the ‘‘ particula undique desecta ” of 
the animal nature, and itself contemplates, and brings forward 
for its disciples’ contemplation, all the energies of creation 
which transform the 77Aos, or lower still, the Bdpfopos of the 
trivia, by Athena’s help, into forms of power ;—(ro pév oAov 
GpxiTextwv avros HV. ovveipyatero S€ Tor Kal y “AOnva éurvéovea 
Tov mydOv Kal guivya Tovotca civat Ta tAdopaTa;)*—but it has 
nothing whatever to do with the representation of forms not 
living, however beautiful, (as of clouds or waves) ; nor may 
it condescend to use its perfect skill, except in expressing the 
noblest conditions of life. 

These laws of sculpture, being wholly contrary to the prac- 
tice of our day, Icannot expect you to accept on my assertion, 
nor doI wish you to do so, By placing definitely good and 
bad sculpture before you, I do not doubt but that I shall 


* ¢* And in sum, he himself (Prometheus) was the master-maker, and 
Athena worked together with him, breathing into the clay, and caused 
the moulded things to have soul (psyche) in them.”—LuUCIAN, PROME« 
THEUS. 


328 ARATRA PENTETLICI. 


gradually prove to you the nature of all excelling and endur- 
ing qualities ; but to-day I will only confirm my assertions by 
laying before you the statement of the Greeks themselves on 
the subject ; given in their own noblest time, and assuredly 
authoritative, in every point which it embraces, for all time 
to come. 

71. If any of you have looked at the explanation I have 
eiven of the myth of Athenain my Queen of the Air, you can- 
not but have been surprised that I took scarcely any note of 
the story of her birth. I did not, because that story is con- 
nected intimately with the Apolline myths ; and is told of 
Athena, not essentially as the goddess of the air, but as the 
goddess of Art-Wisdom. 

You have probably often smiled at the legend itself, or 
avoided thinking of it, as revolting. It is indeed, one of the 
most painful and childish of sacred myths ; yet remember, 
ludicrous and ugly as it seems to us, this story satisfied the 
fancy of the Athenian people in their highest state ; and if it 
did not satisfy—yet it was accepted by, all later mythologists : 
you may also remember I told you to be prepared to find that, 
given a certain degree of national intellect, the ruder the 
symbol, the deeper would be its purpose. And this legend 
of the birth of Athena is the central myth of all that the 
Greeks have left us respecting the power of their arts ; and in 
it they have expressed, as it seemed good to them, the most 
important things they had to tell us on these matters. We 
may read them wrongly ; but we must read them here, if 
anywhere. 

72. There are so many threads to be gathered up in the 
legend, that I cannot hope to put it before you in total clear- 
ness, but I will take main points. Athena is born in the 
island of Rhodes ; and that island is raised out of the sea by 
Apollo, after he had been left without inheritance among the 
gods. Zeus* would have cast the lot again, but Apollo 


* His relations with the two great Titans, Themis and Mnemosyne, 
belong to another group of myths. ‘The father of Athena is the lower 
and nearer physical Zeus, from whom Metis, the mother of Athena, long 
withdraws and disguises herself. 


IMAGINATION. 029 


orders the golden-girdled Lachesis to stretch out her hands; 
and not now by chance or lot, but by noble enchantment, the 
island rises out of the sea. 

Physically, this represents the action of heat and light on 
chaos, especially on the deep sea. It is the “ Fiat lux” of 
Genesis, the first process in the conquest of Fate by Har- 
mony. The island is dedicated to the Nymph Rhodos, by 
whom Apollo has the seven sons who teach codurara vonpara 3 
because the rose is the most beautiful organism existing in 
matter not vital, expressive of the direct action of light on the 
earth, giving lovely form and colour at once ; (compare the use 
of it by Dante as the form of the sainted crowd in highest 
heaven) and remember that, therefore, the rose is in the Greek 
mind, essentially a Doric flower, expressing the worship of 
Light, as the Iris or Ion is an Ionic one, expressing the wor- 
ship of the Winds and Dew. 

73. To understand the agency of Hephestus at the birth of 
Athena, we must again return to the founding of the arts on 
agriculture by the hand. Before you can cultivate land you 
must clear it ; and the characteristic weapon of Hepheestus, — 
which is as much his attribute as the trident is of Poseidon, 
and the rhabdos of Hermes, is not, as you would have ex- 
pected, the hammer, but the clearing-axe—the doubled-edged 
wéX\exus, the same that Calypso gives Ulysses with which to cut 
down the trees for his home voyage ; so that both the naval 
and agricultural strength of the Athenians are expressed by 
this weapon, with which they had to hew out their fortune. 
And you must keepin mind this agriculturally laborious 
character of Hephzestus, even when he is most distinctly the 
god of serviceable fire ; thus Horace’s perfect epithet for him 
“avidus” expresses at once the devouring eagerness of fire, 
and the zeal of progressive labour, for Horace gives it to him 
when he is fighting against the giants. And this rude symbol 
of his cleaving the forehead of Zeus with the axe, and giving 
birth to Athena signifies, indeed, physically the thrilling 
power of heat in the heavens, rending the clouds, and giving 
birth to the blue air; but far more deeply it signifies the sub- 
duing of adverse Fate by true labour ; until, out of the chasm, 


330 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


cleft by resolute and industrious fortitude, springs the Spirit 
of Wisdom. 

74. Here (Fig. 4) is an early drawing of the myth, to which 
I shall have to refer afterwards in illustration of the childish- 
ness of the Greek mind at the time when its art-symbols 
were first fixed; but it is of peculiar value, because the phys- 
ical character of Vulcan, as fire, is indicated by his wearing 
the évdpopides of Hermes, while the antagonism of Zeus, as the 
adverse chaos, either of cloud or of fate, is shown by his 
striking at Hepheestus with his thunderbolt. But Plate IY. 
gives you (as far as the light on the rounded vase will allow 





Fia, 4. 


it to be deciphered) a characteristic representation of the 
scene, as conceived in later art. 

75. I told you in a former lecture of this course that the 
entire Greek intellect was in a childish phase as compared 
to that of modern times. Observe, however, childishness 
does not necessarily imply universal inferiority: there may 
be a vigorous, acute, pure, and solemn childhood, and there 
may be a weak, foul, and ridiculous condition of advanced 
life ; but the one is still essentially the childish, and the other 
the adult phase of existence. 

76. You will find, then, that the Greeks were the first 
people that were born into complete humanity. All nations 
before them had been, and all around them still were, partly 


IMAGINATION. 30] 


savage, bestial, clay-encumbered, inhuman ; still semi-goat, or 
semi-ant, or semi-stone, or semi-cloud. But the power of a 
new spirit came upon the Greeks, and the stones were filled 
with breath, and the clouds clothed with flesh ; and then 
came the great spiritual battle between the Centaurs and Lap- 
ithe; and the living creatures became ‘Children of Men.” 
Taught, yet by the Centaur—sown, as they knew, in the fang 
—from the dappled skin of the brute, from the leprous scale 
of the serpent, their flesh came again as the flesh of a little 
child, and they were clean. 

Fix your mind on this as the very central character of the 
Greek race—the being born pure and human out of the bru- 
tal misery of the past, and looking abroad, for the first time, 
with their children’s eyes, wonderingly open, on the strange 
and divine world. 

77. Make some effort to remember, so far as may be possi- 
ble to you, either what you felt in yourselves when you were 
young, or what you have observed in other children, of the 
action of thought and faney. Children are continually repre- 
sented as living in an ideal world of their own. So faras I 
have myself observed, the distinctive character of a child is to 
live always in the tangible present, having little pleasure in 
memory, and being utterly impatient and tormented by antic- 
ipation: weak alike in reflection and forethought, but having 
an intense possession of the actual present, down to the short- 
est moments and least objects of it ; possessing it, indeed, so 
intensely that the sweet childish days are as long as twenty 
days will be ; and setting all the faculties of heart and imag- 
ination on little things, so as to be able to make anything out 
of them he chooses. Confined to a little garden, he does not 
imagine himself somewhere else, but makes a great garden 
out of that ; possessed of an acorn-cup, he will not despise it 
and throw it away, and covet a golden one in its stead : it is 
the adult who does so. The child keeps his acorn-cup as a 
treasure, and makes a golden one out of it in his mind; so 
that the wondering grown-up person standing beside him is 
always tempted to ask concerning his treasures, not, ‘* What - 
would you have more than these?” but ‘What possibly can 


one 


do2 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


you see in these?” for, to the bystander, there is a ludicrous 
and incomprehensible inconsistency between the child’s words 
and the reality. The little thing tells him gravely, holding 
up the acorn-cup, that ‘this is a queen’s crown, or a fairy’s 
boat,” and, with beautiful effrontery, expects him to believe 
the same. But observe—the acorn-cup must be there, and in 
his own hand. “Give it me;” then I will make more of it 
for myself. ‘That is the child’s one word, always. 


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Give me any thing definite here in my sight, then I will make 
more of it. 

I cannot easily express to you how strange it seems to me 
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IMAGINATION. 333 


in our public schools the authority of Greek literature, our 
younger students take no interest in the manual work of the 
people upon whose thoughts the tone of their early intellect- 
ual life has exclusively depended. But I am not surprised 
that the interest, if awakened, should not at first take the 
form of admiration. ‘The inconsistency between an Homeric 
description of a piece of furniture or armour, and the actual 
rudeness of any piece of art approximating within even three 
or four centuries, to the Homeric period, is so great, that we 
at first cannot recognize the art as elucidatory of, or in any 
way related to, the poetic language. 

79. You will find, however, exactly the same kind of dis- 
crepancy between early sculpture, and the languages of deed 
and thought, in the second birth, and childhood, of the 
world, under Christianity. The same fair thoughts and bright 
imaginations arise again; and similarly, the fancy is content 
with the rudest symbols by which they can be formalized to 
the eyes. You cannot understand that the rigid, figure (2) 
with chequers or spots on its breast, and sharp lines of 
drapery to its feet, could represent, to the Greek, the healing 
majesty of heaven: but can you any better understand howa 
symbol so haggard as this (Fig. 5) could represent to the 
noblest hearts of the Christian ages the power and ministra- 
tion of angels? Yet it not only did so, but retained in the 
rude undulatory and linear ornamentation of its dress, record 
of the thoughts intended to be conveyed by the spotted gis 
and falling chiton of Athena, eighteen hundred years before. 
Greek and Venetian alike, in their noble childhood, knew with 
the same terror the coiling wind and congealed hail in heaven 
—saw with the same thankfulness the dew shed softly on the 
earth, and on its flowers; and both recognized, ruling these, 
and symbolized by them, the great helpful spirit of Wisdom, 
which leads the children of men to all knowledge, all courage, 
and all art. 

80. Read the inscription written on the sarcophagus (Plate 
V.), at the extremity of which this angel is sculptured. It 
stands in an open recess in the rude brick wall of the west 
front of the church of St. John and Paul at Venice, being the 


354 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


tomb of the two doges, father and son, Jacopo and Lorenzo 
Tiepolo. This is the inscription :— 


‘* Quos natura pares studiis, virtutibus, arte 
Edidit, illustres genitor natusque, sepulti 
Hac sub rupe Duces, Venetum charissima proles 
Theupula collatis dedit hos celebranda triumphis. 
Omuia presentis donavit predia templi 
Dux Jacobus: valido fixit moderamine leges 
Urbis, et ingratam redimens certamine Jadram 
Dalmatiosque dedit patrie, post, Marte subactas 
Graiorum pelago maculavit sanguine classes. 
Suscipit oblatos princeps Laurentius Istros, 
Et domuit rigidos, ingenti strage cadentes, 
Bononie populos. Hine subdita Cervia cessit. 
Fundavere vias pacis ; fortique relicta 
Re, superos sacris petierunt mentibus ambo. 


** Dominus Jachobus hobiit * M.ccLI. Dominus Laurentius hobiit 
M.CCLXXVIII.” 


You see, therefore, this tomb is an invaluable example of 
thirteenth century sculpture in Venice. In Plate VI, you 
have an example of the (coin) sculpture of the date accurately 
corresponding in Greece to the thirteenth century in Venice, 
when the meaning of symbols was everything and the work- 
manship comparatively nothing. The upper head isan Athena, 
of Athenian work in the seventh or sixth century—(the coin 
itself may have been struck later, but the archaic type was re- 
tained). The two smaller impressions below are the front and 
obverse of a coin of the same age from Corinth, the head of 
Athena on one side, and Pegasus, with the archaic Koppa, on 
the other. The smaller head is bare, the hair being looped 
up at the back and closely bound swith an olive branch. You 
are to note this general outline of the head, already given in 
a more finished type in Plate IL, as a most important element- 
ary form in the finest sculpture, not of Greece only, but of all 
Christendom. In the upper head the hair is restrained still 
more closely by a round helmet, for the most part smooth, 


*'The Latin verses are of later date ; the contemporary plain prose re- 
tains the Venetian gutturals and aspirates. 





PLATE VI.—ARCHAIC ATHENA OF ATHENS AND CORINTH. 





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IMAGINATION. 335 


but embossed with a single flower tendril, having one bud, 
one flower, and above it, two olive leaves. You have thus the 
most absolutely restricted symbol possible to human thought 
of the power of Athena over the flowers and trees of the earth. 
An olive leaf by itself could not have stood for the sign of a 
tree, but the two can, when set in position of growth. 

I would not give you the reverse of the coin on the same 
plate, because you would have looked at it only, laughed at it, 
and not examined the rest; but here it is, wonderfully en- 
graved for you (Fig. 6): of it we 
shall have more to say afterwards. 

81. And now as you look at these 
rude vestiges of the religion of 
Greece, and at the vestiges, still 
ruder, on the Ducal tomb, of. the 
religion of Christendom, take warn- 
ing against two opposite errors.. 

There isa school of teachers who 
will tell you that nothing but Greek 
art is deserving of study, and that 
all our work at this day should be an imitation of it. 

Whenever you feel tempted to believe them, think of these 
portraits of Athena and her owl, and be assured that Greek 
art is not in all respects perfect, nor exclusively deserving of 
imitation. 

There is another school of teachers who will tell you that 
Greek art is good for nothing ; that the soul of the Greek was 
outcast, and that Christianity entirely superseded its faith, 
and excelled its works. 

Whenever you feel tempted to believe them, think of this 
angel on the tomb of Jacopo Tiepolo ; and remember, that 
Christianity, after it had been twelve hundred years existent 
as an imaginative power on the earth, could do no better work 
than this, though with all the former power of Greece to help 
it ; nor was able to engrave its triumph in having stained its 
fleets in the seas of Greece with the blood of her people, but 
between barbarous imitations of the pillars which that people 
had invented. 





336 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


82. Receiving these two warnings, receive also this lesson. 
In both examples, childish though it be, this Heathen and 
Christian art is alike sincere, and alike vividly imaginative : 
the actual work is that of infancy ; the thoughts, in their vi- 
sionary simplicity, are also the thoughts of infancy, but in 
their solemn virtue, they are the thoughts of men. 

We, on the contrary, are now, in all that we do, absolutely 
without sincerity ;—absolutely, therefore, without imagina- 
tion, and without virtue. Our hands are dexterous with the 
vile and deadly dexterity of machines; our minds filled with 
incoherent fragments of faith, which we cling to in coward- 
ice, without believing, and make pictures of in vanity, with- 
out loving. False and base alike, whether we admire or imi- 
tate, we cannot learn from the Heathen’s art, but only pilfer 
it ; we cannot revive the Christian’s art, but only galvanize it ; 
we are, in the sum of us, not human artists at all, but mechan- 
isms of conceited clay, masked in the furs and feathers of liy- 
ing creatures, and convulsed with voltaic spasms, in mockery 
of animation. 

83. You think, perhaps, that I am using terms unjustifiable 
in violence. They would, indeed, be unjustifiable, if, spoken 
from this chair, they were violent at all. They are, unhap- 
pily, temperate and accurate,—except in shortcoming of blame. 
For we are not only impotent to restore, but strong to defile, 
the work of past ages. Of the impotence, take but this one, 
utterly humiliatory, and, in the full meaning of it, ghastly, 
example. We have lately been busy embanking, in the cap- 
ital of the country, the river which, of all its waters, the im- 
agination of our ancestors had made most sacred, and the 
bounty of nature most useful. Of all architectural features of 
the metropolis, that embankment will be, in future, the most 
conspicuous ; and in its position and purpose it was the most 
capable of noble adornment. 

For that adornment, nevertheless, the utmost which our 
modern poetical imagination has been able to invent, is a row 
of gas-lamps. It has, indeed, farther suggested itself to our 
minds as appropriate to gas-lamps set beside a river, that the 
eas Should come out of fishes’ tails ; but we have not ingenuity 


IMAGINATION. 387 


enough to cast so much as a smelt or a sprat for ourselves ; 
so we borrow the shape of a Neapolitan marble, which has 
been the refuse of the plate and candlestick shops in every 
capital of Europe for the last fifty years. We cast that badly, 
and give lustre to the ill-cast fish with lacquer in imitation of 
bronze. On the base of their pedestals, towards the road, 
we put for advertisement’s sake, the initials of the casting 
firm ; and, for farther originality and Christianity’s sake, the 
caduceus of Mercury; and to adorn the front of the pedestals 
towards the river, being now wholly at our wit’s end, we 
can think of nothing better than to borrow the door-knocker 
which—again for the last fifty years—has disturbed and dec- 
orated two or three millions of London street-doors; and 
magnifying the marvellous device of it, a lion’s head with a 
ring in its mouth (still borrowed from the Greek), we complete 
the embankment with a row of heads and rings, on a scale 
which enables them to produce, at the distance at which only 
they can be seen, the exact effect of a row of sentryboxes. 

84. Farther. In the very centre of the city, and at the 
point where the Embankment commands a view of Westmin- 
ster Abbey on one side and of St. Paul’s on the other—that is 
to say, at precisely the most important and stately moment 
of its whole course—it has to pass under one of the arches of 
Waterloo Bridge, which, in the sweep of its curve, is as vast 
—it alone—as the Rialto at Venice, and scarcely less seemly 
in proportions. But over the Rialto, though of late and de- 
based Venetian work, there still reigns some power of human 
imagination: on the two flanks of it are carved the Virgin 
and the Angel of the Annunciation ; on the keystone the de- 
scending Dove. It is not, indeed, the fault of living designers 
that the Waterloo arch is nothing more than a gloomy and 
hollow heap of wedged blocks of blind granite. But just 
beyond the damp shadow of it, the new Embankment is 
reached by a flight of stairs, which are, in point of fact, the 
principal approach to it, a-foot, from central London ; the de- 
scent from the very midst of the metropolis of England to 
the banks of the chief river of England; and for this ap- 
proach, living designers are answerable. 


098 ARATRA PENTELICL 


85. The principal decoration of the descent is again a gas- 
lamp, but a shattered one, with a brass crown on the top of 
it or, rather, half-crown, and that turned the wrong way, the 
back of it to the river and causeway, its flame supplied by a 
visible pipe far wandering along the wall; the whole appa- 
ratus being supported by a rough cross-beam. Fastened to 
the centre of the arch above is a large placard, stating that 
the Royal Humane Society’s drags are in constant readiness, 
and that their office is at 4, Trafalgar Square. On each side 
of the arch are temporary, but dismally old and battered 
boardings, across two angles capable of unseemly use by the 
British public. Above one of these is another placard, stat- 
ing that this is the Victoria Embankment. The steps them- 
selves—some forty of them—descend under a tunnel, which 
the shattered gas-lamp lights by night, and nothing by day. 
They are covered with filthy dust, shaken off from infinitude 
of filthy feet ; mixed up with shreds of paper, orange-peel, 
foul straw, rags, and cigar ends, and ashes ; the whole agglu- 
tinated, more or less, by dry saliva into slippery blotches and 
patches ; or, when not so fastened, blown dismally by the 
sooty wind hither and thither, or into the faces of those who 
ascend and descend. The place is worth your visit, for you 
are not likely to find elsewhere a spot which, either in costly 
and ponderous brutality of building, or in the squalid and 
indecent accompaniment of it, is so far separated from the 
peace and grace of nature, and so accurately indicative of the 
methods of our national resistance to the Grace, Mercy, and 
Peace of Heaven. 

86. I am obliged always to use the English word “ Grace ” 
in two senses, but remember that the Greek xepis includes 
them both (the bestowing, that is to say of Beauty and 
Mercy) ; and especially it includes these in the passage of 
Pindav’s first ode, which gives us the key to the right inter- 
pretation of the power of sculpture in Greece. You remem- 
ber that I told you, in my Sixth Introductory Lecture (§ 151), 
that the mythic accounts of Greek sculpture begin in the 
legends of the family of Tantalus ; and especially in the most 
grotesque legend of them all, the inlaying of the ivory shoul 


IMAGINATION. 339 


der of Pelops. At that story Pindar pauses—not, indeed, 
without admiration, nor alleging any impossibility in the cir- 
cumstances themselves, but doubting the careless hunger of 
Demeter—and gives his own reading of the event, instead of 
the ancient one. He justifies this to himself, and to his hear- 
ers, by the plea that myths have, in some sort, or degree, 
(ov tt), led the mind of mortals beyond the truth: and then 
he goes on :— 

“Grace, which creates everything that is kindly and sooth- 
ing for mortals, adding honour, has often made things at first 
untrustworthy, become trustworthy through Love.” 

87. I cannot, except in these lengthened terms, give you 
the complete force of the passage; especially of the azorov 
eunoato murov—“‘ made it trustworthy by passionate desire 
that it should be so ”—which exactly describes the temper of 
religious persons at the present day, who are kindly and sin- 
cere, in clinging to the forms of faith which either have long 
been precious to themselves, or which they feel to have been 
without question instrumental in advancing the dignity of 
mankind. And it is part of the constitution of humanity—a 
part which, above others, you are in danger of unwisely con- 
temning under the existing conditions of our knowledge, that 
the things thus sought for belief with eager passion, do, 
indeed, become trustworthy to us; that, to each of us, they 
verily become what we would have them; the force of the 
pus and pyvyun with which we seek after them, does, indeed, 
make them powerful to us for actual good or evil; and it is 
thus granted to us to create not only with our hands things 
that exalt or degrade our sight, but with our hearts also, 
things that exalt or degrade our souls; giving true substance 
to all that we hoped for ; evidence to things that we have not 
seen, but have desired to see; and calling,in the sense of 
creating, things that are not, as though they were. 

88. You remember that in distinguishing Imagination from 
Idolatry, I referred you to the forms of passionate affection 
with which a noble people commonly regards the rivers and 
springs of its native land. Some conception of personality 
or of spiritual power in the stream, is almost necessarily in- 


340 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


volved in such emotion; and prolonged xapis in the form of 
eratitude, the return of Love for benefits continually bestowed, 
at last alike in all the highest and the simplest minds, when 
they are honourable and pure, makes this untrue thing trust- 
worthy ; amucrov éujoaro miotov, until it becomes to them the 
safe basis of some of the happiest impulses of their moral 
nature. Next to the marbles of Verona, given you as a primal 
type of the sculpture of Christianity, moved to its best energy 
in adorning the entrance of its temples, I have not unwillingly 
placed, as your introduction to the best sculpture of the re- 
ligion of Greece, the forms under which it represented the 
personality of the fountain Arethusa. But, without restriction 
to those days of absolute devotion, let me simply point out to 
you how this untrue thing, made true by Love, has intimate 
and heavenly authority even over the minds of men of the 
most practical sense, the most shrewd wit, and the most 
severe precision of moral temper. The fair vision of Sabrina 
in Comus, the endearing and tender promise, ‘‘ Fies nobilium 
tu quoque fontium,” and the joyful and proud affection of the 
great Lombard’s address to the lakes of his enchanted land,— 


Te, Lari maxume, teque 
Fluctibus et fremitu assurgens, Benace, marino, 


may surely be remembered by you with regretful piety, when 
you stand by the blank stones which at once restrain and dis- 
grace your native river, as the final worship rendered to it by 
modern philosophy. But a little incident which I saw last 
summer on its bridge at Wallingford, may put the contrast of 
ancient and modern feeling before you still more forcibly. 

89. Those of you who have read with attention (none of 
us can read with too much attention), Moliére’s most perfect 
work, the Misanthrope, must remember Celiméne’s description 
of her lovers, and her excellent reason for being unable to re- 
gard with any favour, “notre grand flandrin de vicomte,— 
depuis que je lai vu, trois quarts d’heure durant, cracher dans 
un puits pour faire des ronds.” That sentence is worth noting, 
both in contrast to the reverence paid by the ancients to wells 
and springs, and as one of the most interesting traces of the 


IMAGINATION. O41 


extension of the loathsome habit among the upper classes of 
Europe and America, which now renders all external grace, 
dignity, and decency, impossible in the thoroughfares of their 
principal cities. In connection wish that sentence of Moliere’s 
you may advisably also remember this fact, which I chanced 
to notice on the bridge of Wallingford. I was walking from 
end to end of it, and back again, one Sunday afternoon of last 
May, trying to conjecture what had made this especial bend 
and ford of the Thames so important in all the Anglo-Saxon 
wars. It was one of the few sunny afternoons of the bitter 
spring, and I was very thankful for its light, and happy in 
watching beneath it the flow and the glittering of the classical 
river, when I noticed a well-dressed boy, apparently just out 
of some orderly Sunday-school, leaning far over the parapet ; 
watching, as I conjectured, some bird or insect on the bridge- 
buttress. I went up to him to see what he was looking at; 
but just as I got close to him, he started over to the opposite 
parapet, and put himself there into the same position, his ob- 
ject being, as I then perceived, to spit from both sides upon 
the heads of a pleasure party who were passing in a boat 
below. 

90. The incident may seem to you too trivial to be noticed 
in this place. To me, gentlemen, it was by no means trivial. 
It meant, in the depth of it, such absence of all true yxaprs, 
reverence, and intellect, as it is very dreadful to trace in the 
mind of any human creature, much more in that of a child 
educated with apparently every advantage of circumstance in 
_ a beautiful English country town, within ten miles of our 
University. Most of all, is it terrific when we regard it as the 
exponent (and this, in truth, it is), of the temper which, as 
distinguished from former methods, either of discipline or 
recreation, the present tenor of our general teaching fosters 
in the mind of youth ;—teaching which asserts liberty to be a 
right, and obedience a degradation ; and which, regardless 
alike of the fairness of nature and the grace. of behaviour, 
leaves the insolent spirit and degraded senses to find their 
only occupation in malice, and their only satisfaction in 
shame. 


342 ARATRA PHNTELICI. 


91. You will, I hope, proceed with me, not scornfully any 
more, to trace, in the early art of a noble heathen nation, the 
feeling of what was at least a better childishness than this of 
ours ; and the efforts to express, though with hands yet fail- 
ing, and minds oppressed by ignorant phantasy, the first truth 
by which they knew that they lived ; the birth of wisdom and 
of all her powers of help to man, as the reward of his resolute 
labour. 

92. “‘Adaicrov téxvarcr.’’ Note that word of Pindar in the 
Seventh Olympic. This axe-blow of Vulcan’s was to the 
Greek mind truly what Clytemnestra falsely asserts hers to 
have been “rys de de&tas yxeEpds, Epyov, dixalas réxtovos” ; physi- 
cally, it meant the opening of the blue through the rent clouds 
of heaven, by the action of local terrestrial heat (of Hepheestus 
as opposed to Apollo, who shines on the surface of the upper 
clouds, but cannot pierce them ; and, spiritually, it meant the 
first birth of prudent thought out of rude labour, the clear- 
ing-axe in the hand of the woodman being the practical ele- 
mentary sign of his difference from the wild animals of the 
wood. ‘Then he goes on, “‘ From the high head of her Father, 
Athenaia rushing forth, cried with her great and exceeding 
cry ; and the Heaven trembled at her, andthe Earth Mother.” 
The cry of Athena, I have before pointed out, physically dis- 
tinguishes her, as the spirit of the air, from silent elemental 
powers ; but in this grand passage of Pindar it is again the 
mythic ery of which he thinks; that is to say, the giving 
articulate words, by intelligence, to the silence of Fate. 
‘Wisdom crieth aloud, she uttereth her voice in the streets,” 
and Heaven and EHarth tremble at her reproof. 

93. Uttereth her voice in “the streets.” For all men, that 
is to say; but to what work did the Greeks think that her 
voice was to call them? ‘What was to be the impulse com- 
municated by her prevailing presence ; what the sign of the 
people’s obedience to her ? 

This was to be the sign—‘‘But she, the goddess herself, 
gave to them to prevail over the dwellers upon earth, with 
best-labouring hands in every art. And by their paths there were 
the likenesses of living and of creeping things ; and the glory 


IMAGINATION. 343 


was deep. For to the cunning workman, greater knowledge 
comes, undeceitful.” 

94, An infinitely pregnant passage, this, of which to-day 
you are to note mainly these three things: First, that Athena 
is the goddess of Doing, not at all of sentimental inaction. 
She is begotten, as it were, of the woodman’s axe ; her purpose 
is never in a word only, but ina wordand a blow. She guides 
the hands that labour best, in every art. 

95. Secondly. The victory given by Wisdom, the worker, to 
the handsthat labour best, is that the streets and ways, KéAevor, 
shall be filled by likenesses of living and creeping things ? 

Things living, and creeping! Are the Reptile things not 
alive then? You think Pindar wrote that carelessly ? or that, 
if he had only known a little modern anatomy, instead of 
“reptile” things, he would have said ‘‘monochondylous ” 
things? Be patient, and let us attend to the main points 
first. | 

Sculpture, it thus appears, is the only work of wisdom that 
the Greeks care to speak of; they think it involves and crowns 
every other. Image-making art; this is Athena’s, as queen- 
liest of the arts. Literature, the order and the strength of 
word, of course belongs to Apollo and the Muses; under 
Athena are the Substances and the Forms of things. 

96. Thirdly. By this forming of Images there is to be 
gained a “deep "—that is to say—a weighty, and prevailing, 
glory ; not a floating nor fugitive one. For to the cunning 
workman, greater knowledge comes, “‘ undeceitful.” 

“ Aaevtt:” Tam forced to use two English words to trans- 
late that. single Greek one. The “cunning” workman, 
thoughtful in experience, touch, and vision of the thing to be 
done ; no machine, witless, and of necessary motion ; yet not 
cunning only, but having perfect habitual skill of hand also ; 
the confirmed reward of truthful doing. Recollect, in con- 
nection with this passage of Pindar, Homer’s three verses 
about getting the lines of ship-timber true, (Zl. xv. 410) 

“?AAN @ote ordOun Sopu vhiov ekddver 
TeKTOVOS év TaAdunat Sanovos, bs pa TE WATS 
ed €id9 coplys, bwoOnuottvnow *AOhrys,” 


B44 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


and the beautiful epithet of Persephone, ‘‘ daepa,” as tha 
Tryer and Knower of good work ; and remembering these, 
trust Pindar for the truth of his saying, that to the cunning 
workman—(and let me solemnly enforce the words by adding 
—that to him only,) knowledge comes undeceitful. 

97. You may have noticed, perhaps, and with a smile, as 
one of the paradoxes you often hear me blamed for too fondly 
stating, what I told you in the close of my Third Introductory 
Lecture, that ‘‘so far from art’s being immoral, little else ex- 
cept art is moral.” I have now farther to tell you, that little 
else, except art, is wise; that all knowledge, unaccompanied 
by a habit of useful action, is too likely to become deceitful, 
and that every habit of useful action must resolve itself into 
some elementary practice of manual labour. And I would, in 
all sober and direct earnestness advise you, whatever may be 
the aim, predilection, or necessity of your lives, to resolve 
upon this one thing at least, that you will enable yourselves 
daily to do actually with your hands, something that is useful 
to mankind. To do anything well with your hands, useful 
or not ;—to be, even in trifling, taAdpyot Sajpov, is already 
much ;—when we come to examine the art of the middle ages 
I shall be able to show you that the strongest of all influences 
of right then brought to bear upon character was the neces- 
sity for exquisite manual dexterity in the management of the 
spear and bridle ; and in your own experience most of you 
will be able to recognize the wholesome effect, alike on body 
and mind, of striving, within proper limits of time, to become 
either good batsmen, or good oarsmen. But the bat and the 
racer’s oar are children’s toys. Resolve that you will be men 
in usefulness, as well as in strength; and you will find that 
then also, but not till then, you can become men in under- 
standing ; and that every fine vision and subtle theorem will 
present itself to you thenceforward undeceitfully, trofypoovryow 
AGnvns. 

98. But there is more to be gathered yet from the words of 
Pindar. He is thinking, in his brief, intense way, at once of 
Athena’s work on the soul, and of her literal power on the 
dust of the Earth. His ‘‘ xéAcvfo.” is a wide word meaning all 





IMAGINATION. 045 


the paths of seaand land. Consider, therefore, what Athena’s 
own work actually is—in the literal fact of it. The blue, clear 
air is the sculpturing power upon the earth and sea. Where 
the surface of the earth is reached by that, and its matter and 
* substance inspired with, and filled by that, organic form be- 
comes possible. You must indeed have the sun, also, and 
moisture ; the kingdom of Apollo risen out of the sea: but 
the sculpturing of living things, shape by shape, is Athena’s, 
so that under the brooding spirit of the air, what was without 
form, and void brings forth the moving creature that hath 
life. 

99. That is her work then—the giving of Form ; then the 
separately Apolline work is the giving of Light; or, more 
strictly, Sight: giving that faculty to the retina to which we 
owe not merely the idea of light, but the existence of it ; for 
light is to be defined only as the sensation produced in the eye 
of an animal, under given conditions; those same conditions 
being, to a stone, only warmth or chemical influence, but not 
light. And that power of seeing, and the other various per- 
sonalities and authorities of the animal body, in pleasure and 
pain, have never, hitherto, been, I do not say, explained, but 
in any wise touched or approached by scientific discovery. 
Some of the conditions of mere external animal form and of 
muscular vitality have been shown ; but for the most part that 
is true, even of external form, which I wrote six years ago. 
“You may alwaysstand by Form against Force. Toa painter, 
the essential character of anything is the form of it, and the 
philosophers cannot touch that. They come and tell you, for 
instance, that there is as much heat, or motion, or calorifie 
energy (or whatever else they like to call it), in a tea-kettle, as 
in a gier-eagle. Very good: that is so; and it is very inter- 
esting. It requires just as much heat as will boil the kettle, 
to take the gier-eagle up to his nest, and as much more to 
bring him down again on a hare or a partridge. But we 
painters, acknowledging the equality and similarity of the 
kettle and the bird in all scientific respects, attach, for our 
part, our principal interest to the difference in their forms. 
For us, the primarily cognisable facts, in the two things, are, 


346 ARATRA PHNTELICI. 


that the kettle has a spout, and the eagle a beak; the one a 
lid on its back, the other a pair of wings; not to speak of the 
distinction also of volition, which the philosophers may prop- 
erly call merely a form or mode of force—but, then to an art- 
ist, the form or mode is the gist of the business.” 

100. As you wiil find that it is, not to the artist only, but 
to all of us. The laws under which matter is collected and 
constructed are the same throughout the universe: the sub- 
stance so collected, whether for the making of the eagle, or 
the worm, may be analyzed into gaseous identity ; a diffusive 
vital force, apparently so closely related to mechanically meas- 
urable heat as to admit the conception of its being itself me- 
chanically measurable, and unchanging in total quantity, ebbs 
and flows alike through the limbs of men, and the fibres of 
insects. But, above all this, and ruling every grotesque or 
degraded accident of this, are two laws of beauty in form, 
and of nobility in character, which stand in the chaos of crea- 
tion between the Living and the Dead, to separate the things 
that have in them a sacred and helpful, from those that have 
in them an accursed and destroying, nature ; and the power 
of Athena, first physically put forth in the sculpturing of these 
Coa and épmera, these living and reptile things, is put forth, 
finally, in enabling the hearts of men to discern the one from 
the other ; to know the unquenchable fires of the Spirit from 
the unquenchable fires of Death ; and to choose, not unaided, 
between submission to the Love that cannot end, or to the 
Worm that cannot die. 

101. The unconsciousness of their antagonism is the most 
notable characteristic of the modern scientific mind; and I 
believe no credulity or failacy admitted by the weakness (cr 
it may sometimes rather have been the strength) of early im- 
agination, indicates so strange a depression beneath the due 
scale of human intellect, as the failure of the sense of beauty 
in form, and loss of faith in heroism of conduct, which have 
become the curses of recent science,* art, and policy. 

* The best modern illustrated scientific works show perfect faculty of 


representing monkeys, lizards, and insects; absolute incapability of 
representing either a man, a horse, or a lion, 


IMAGINATION. 347 


102. That depression of intellect has been alike exhibited 
in the mean consternation confessedly felt on one side, and 
the mean triumph apparently felt on the other, during the 
course of the dispute now pending as to the origin of man. 
Dispute for the present, not to be decided, and of which the 
decision is to persons in the modern temper of mind, wholly 
without significance: and I earnestly desire that you, my 
pupils, may have firmness enough to disengage your energies 
from investigation so premature and so fruitless, and sense 
enough to perceive that it does not matter how you have 
been made, so long as you are satisfied with being what you 
are. Ifyou are dissatisfied with yourselves, it ought not to 
console, but humiliate you, to imagine that you were once 
seraphs; and if you are pleased with yourselves, it is not 
any ground of reasonable shame to you if, by no fault of 
your own, you have passed through the. elementary condition 
of apes. 

103. Remember, therefore, that it is of the very highest im- 
portance that you should know what you are, and determine 
to be the best that you may be; but it is of no importance 
whatever, except as it may contribute to that end, to know 
what you have been. Whether your Creator shaped you with 
fingers, or tools, as a sculptor would a lump of clay, or gradu- 
ally raised you to manhood through a series of inferior forms, 
is only of moment to you in this respect—that in the one case 
you cannot expect your children to be nobler creatures than 
you are yourselves—in the other, every act and thought of 
your present life may be hastening the advent of a race which 
will look back to you, their fathers (and you ought at least 
to have attained the dignity of desiring that it may be so), 
with incredulous disdain. 

104. But that you are yourselves capable of that disdain 
and dismay; that you are ashamed of having been apes, if 
you ever were so; that you acknowledge instinctively, a 
relation of better and worse, and a law respecting what is 
noble and base, which makes it no question to you that the 
man is worthier than the baboon—this is a fact of infinite sig- 
nificance. This law of preference in your hearts is the true 


B48 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


essence of your being, and the consciousness of that law is a 
more positive existence than any dependent on the coherence 
or forms of matter. 

105. Now, but a few words more of mythology, and I have 
done. Remember that Athena holds the weaver’s shuttle, not 
merely as an instrument of texture, but as an instrument of 
picture ; the ideas of clothing, and of the warmth of life, be- 
ing thus inseparably connected with those of graphic beauty, 
and the brightness of life. I have told you that no art could 
be recovered among us without perfectness in dress, nor with- 
out the elementary graphic art of women, in divers colours of 
needlework. There has been no nation of any art-energy, but 
has strenuously occupied and interested itself in this house- 
hold picturing, from the web of Penelope to the tapestry of 
Queen Matilda, and the meshes of Arras and Gobelins. 

106. We should then naturally ask what kind of embroidery 
Athena put on her own robe ; “‘ wézAov éavov, rouxidov, dv p duty 
ToWjTaTo Kal KaLE Xepo.” 

The subject of that outa of hers, as you know, was the 
war of the giants and gods. Now the real name of these 
giants, remember, is that used by Hesiod, ‘ r7Adyovor,” ‘ mud- 
begotten,” and the meaning of the contest between these and 
Zeus, wndoyévwv éAarnp, 18, again, the inspiration of life into 
the clay, by the goddess of breath ; and the actual confusion 
going on visibly before you, daily, of the earth, heaping itself 
into cumbrous war with the powers above it. 

107. Thus briefly, the entire material of Art, under Athena’s 
hand, is the contest of life with clay ; and all my task in ex- 
plaining to you the early thought of both the Athenian and 
Tuscan schools will only be the tracing of this battle of the 
giants into its full heroic form, when, not in tapestry only— 
but in sculpture—and on the portal of the Temple of Delphi 
itself, you have the “«dAdvos év reixeot Aaivoiot yrydvtwv,’ and 
their defeat hailed by the passionate cry of delight from the 
Athenian maids, beholding Pallas in her full power, “ Aevoow 
IldAAad’ éuay Geov,” my own goddess. All our work, I repeat, 
will be nothing but the inquiry into the development of this 
the subject, and the pressing fully home the question of Plato 


IMAGINATION. 349 


about that embroidery—‘ And think you that there is verily 
war with each other among the Gods? and dreadful enmities 
and battle, such as the poets have told, and such as our 
painters set forth in graven scripture, to adorn all our sacred 
rites and holy places; yes, and in the great Panathenaea 
themselves, the Peplus, full of such wild picturing, is carried 
up into the Acropolis—shall we say that these things are true, 
oh Euthuphron, right-minded friend ? ” 

108. Yes, we say, and know, that these things are true; 
and true for ever: battles of the gods, not among themselves, 
but against the earth-giants. Battle prevailing age by age, in 
nobler life and lovelier imagery ; creation, which no theory of 
mechanism, no definition of force, can explain, the adoption 
and completing of individual form by individual animation, 
breathed out of the lips of the Father of Spirits. And to 
recognize the presence in every knitted shape of dust, by 
which it lives and moves and has its being—to recognize it, 
revere, and show it forth, is to be our eternal Idolatry. 

“Thou shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them.” 

“Assuredly no,” we answered once, in our pride; and 
through porch and aisle, broke down the carved work thereof, 
with axes and hammers. 

Who would have thought the day so near when we should 
bow down to worship, not the creatures, but their atoms,— 
not the forces that form, but those that dissolve them? Trust 
me, gentlemen, the command which is stringent against ado- 
ration of brutality, is stringent no less against adoration of 
chaos, nor is faith in an image fallen from heaven to be re- 
formed by a faith only in the phenomenon of decadence. We 
have ceased from the making of monsters to be appeased by 
sacrifice ;—it is well,—if indeed we have also ceased from 
making them in our thoughts. We have learned to distrust 
the adorning of fair phantasms, to which we once sought for 
succour ;—it is well, if we learn to distrust also the adorning of 
those to which we seek, for temptation ; but the verity of gains 
like these can only be known by our confession of the divine 
seal of strength and beauty upon the tempered frame, and 
honour in the fervent heart, by which, increasing visibly, may 


350 ARATRA PENTELICTI. 


yet be manifested to us the holy presence, and the approving 
love, of the Loving God, who visits the iniquities of the 
Fathers upon the Children, unto the third and fourth genera- 
tion of them that hate Him, and shows mercy unto thousands 
in them that love Him, and keep His Commandments. 


LECTURE IV. 
LIKENESS. 
November, 1870. 


109. You were probably vexed, and tired, towards the close of 
my last lecture, by the time it toox us to arrive at the appar- 
ently simple conclusion, that sculpture must only represent 
organic form, and the strength of life in its contest with mat- 
ter. But it is no small thing to have that ‘‘ Aevcow Haddada ” 
fixed in your minds, as the one necessary sign by which you 
are to recognize right sculpture, and believe me you will find 
it the best of all things, if you can take for yourselves the say- 
ing from the lips of the Athenian maids, in its entirety, and 
say also—Aevoow Haddad’ euay Geov. I proceed to-day into 
the practical appliance of this apparently speculative, but in 
reality imperative, law. 

110. You observe, I have hitherto spoken of the power of 
Athena, as over painting no less than sculpture. But her rule 
over both arts is only so far as they are zoographic ;—repre- 
sentative, that is to say, of animal life, or of such order and 
discipline among other elements, as may invigorate and purify 
it. Now there is a speciality of the art of painting beyond 
this, namely, the representation of phenomena of colour and 
shadow, as such, without question of the nature of the things 
that receive them. I am now accordingly obliged to speak of 
sculpture and painting as distinct arts, but the laws which 
bind sculpture, bind no less the painting of the higher schools 
which has, for its main purpose, the showing beauty in human 
or animal form ; aud which is therefore placed by the Greeks 


LIKENESS. d51 


equally under the rule of Athena, as the Spirit, first, of Life, 
and then of Wisdom in conduct. 

111. First, I say, you are to “see Pallas” in all such work, 
as the Queen of Life; and the practical law which follows 
from this, is one of enormous range and importance, namely, 
that nothing must be represented by sculpture, external to 
any living form, which does not help to enforce or illustrate 
the conception of life. Both dress and armour may be made 
to do this, by great sculptors, and are continually so used by 
the greatest. One of the essential distinctions between the 
Athenian and Florentine schools is dependent on their treat- 
ment of drapery in this respect ; an Athenian always sets it to 
exhibit the action of the body, by flowing with it, or over it, 
or from it, so as to illustrate both its form and gesture; a 
Florentine, on the contrary, always uses his drapery to con- 

“ceal or disguise the forms of the body, and exhibit mental 
emotion: but both use it to enhance the life, either of the 
body or soul ; Donatello and Michael Angelo, no less than the 
sculptors of Gothic chivalry, ennoble armour in the same way ; 
but base sculptors carve drapery and armour for the sake of 
their folds and picturesqueness only, and forget the body be- 
neath. The rule is so stern that all delight in mere incidental 
beauty, which painting often triumphs in, is wholly forbidden 
to sculpture ;—for instance, in painting the branch of a tree, 
you may rightly represent and enjoy the lichens and moss on 
it, but a sculptor must not touch one of them: they are ines- | 
sential to the tree’s life,—he must give the flow and bending 
of the branch only, else he does not enough “see Pallas” 
in it. 

Or to take a higher instance, here is an exquisite little 
painted poem, by Edward Frere ; a cottage interior, one of 
the thousands which within the last two months * have been 
laid desolate in unhappy France. Every accessory in the 
painting is of value—the fire-side, the tiled floor, the vegetables 
lying upon it, and the basket hanging from the roof. But 
not one of these accessories would have been admissible 


* See date of delivery of Lecture. The picture was of a peasant girl 
of eleven or twelve years old, peeling carrots by a cottage fire. 


oo2 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


in sculpture. You must carve nothing but what has life. 
“Why”? you probably feel instantly inclined to ask me.— 
You see the principle we have got, instead of being blunt or 
useless, is such an edged tool that you are startled the moment 
I apply it. ‘‘ Must we refuse every pleasant accessory and 
picturesque detail, and petrify nothing but living creatures” ? 
—Even so: I would not assert it on my own authority. It is 
the Greeks who say it, but whatever they say of sculpture, be 
assured, is true. 

112. That then is the first law—you must see Pallas as the 
Lady of Life—the second is, you must see her as the Lady of 
Wisdom ; or codia—and this is the chief matter of all I can- 
not but think, that after the considerations into which we 
have now entered, you will find more interest than hitherto 
in comparing the statements of Aristotle, in the Ethics, with 
those of Plato in the Polity, which are authoritative as Greek 
definitions of goodness in art, and which you may safely hold 
authoritative as constant definitions of it. You remember, 
doubtless, that the copia, or dper? téyvys, for the sake of which 
Phidias is called codds as a sculptor, and Polyclitus as an 
image-maker, Eth. 6. 7. (the opposition is both between ideal 
and portrait sculpture, and between working in stone and 
bronze) consists in the ‘“‘vots trav timwrarav ty pice,’ “the 
mental apprehension of the things that are most honourable 
in their nature.” Therefore what is, indeed, most lovely, the 
true image-maker will most love; and what is most hate- 
ful, he will most hate, and in all things discern the best and 
strongest part of them, and represent that essentially, or, if 
the opposite of that, then with manifest detestation and horror. 
That is his art wisdom ; the knowledge of good and evil, and 
the love of good, so that you may discern, even in his repre- 
sentation of the vilest thing, his acknowledgment of what re- 
demption is possible for it, or latent power exists in it ; and, 
contrariwise, his sense of its present misery. But for the most 
part, he will idolize, and force us also to idolize, whatever is 
living, and virtuous, and victoriously right; opposing to it 
in some definite mode the image of the conquered épzerov. 

113. This is generally true of both the great arts; but in 


LO = 


LIKENESS, £538 


severity and precision, true of sculpture. To return to our 
illustration : this poor little girl was more interesting to Ed- 
ward Frere, he being a painter, because she was poorly dressed, 
and wore these clumsy shoes, and old red cap, and patched 
gown. May we sculpture her so? No. We may sculpture 
her naked, if we like ; but not in rags. 

But if we may not put her into marble in rags, may we give 
her a pretty frock with ribands and flounces to it, and put 
her into marble in that? No. We may put her simplest 
peasant’s dress, so it be perfect and orderly, into marble ; any- 
thing finer than that would be more dishonourable in the eyes 
of Athena than rags. If she were a French princess, you 
might carve her embroidered robe and diadem ; if she were 
Joan of Are you might carve her armour—for then these also 
would be “rév tipwwrarev,” not otherwise. 

114. Is not this an edge-tool we have got hold of, unawares ? 
and a subtle one too ; so delicate and scimitar-like in decision. 
For note, that even Joan of Arc’s armour must be only sculpt- 
ured, if she has tt on; it is not the honourableness or beauty 
of it that are enough, but the direct bearing of it by her body. 
You might be deeply, even pathetically, interested by looking 
at a good knight’s dinted coat of mail, left in his desolate hall. 
May you sculpture it where it hangs? No; the helmet for 
his pillow, if you will—no more. 

You see we did not do our dull work for nothing in last 
lecture. I define what we have gained once more, and then 
we will enter on our new ground. 

115. The proper subject of sculpture, we have determined, 
is the spiritual power seen in the form of any living thing, 
and so represented as to give evidence that the sculptor has 
loved the good of it and hated the evil. 

“So represented,” we say ; but how is that to be done? 
Why should it not be represented, if possible, just as it is 
seen? What mode or limit of representation may we adopt? 
We are to carve things that have life ;—shall we try so to imi- 
tate them that they may indeed seem living,—or only half 
living, and like stone instead of flesh ? 

It will simplify this question if I show you three examples 


ab4 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


of what the Greeks actually did: three typical pieces of their 
sculpture, in order of perfection. 

116. And now, observe that in all our historical work, I will 
endeavour to do, myself, what I have asked you to do in your 
drawing exercises ; namely, to outline firmly in the beginning, 
and then fill in the detail more minutely. I will give you 
first, therefore, in a symmetrical form, absolutely simple and 
easily remembered, the large chronology of the Greek school ; 
within that unforgettable scheme we will place, as we discover 
them, the minor relations of arts and times. 

I number the nine centuries before Christ thus, upwards, 
and divide them into three groups of three each. 








( 9 
A. ARCHAIC. 4 8 
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B. BEST. { 5 
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Then the ninth, eighth, and seventh centuries are the period 
of Archaic Greek Art, steadily progressive wherever it existed. 

The sixth, fifth, and fourth are the period of central Greek 
Art; the fifth, or central century producing the finest, That 
is easily recollected by the battle of Marathon. And the third, 
second, and first centuries are the period of steady decline. 

Learn this A B C thoroughly, and mark, for yourselves, 
what you, at present, think the vital events in each century. 
As you know more, you will think other events the vital ones ; 
but the best historical knowledge only approximates to true 


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PLATE VII.—ARCHAIC, CENTRAL AND DECLINING ART 
OF GREECE. 


LIKIN ESs. 355 


thought in that matter ; only be sure that what is truly vital 
in the character which governs events, is always expressed. by 
the art of the century ; so that if you could interpret that art 
rightly, the better part of your task in reading history would 
be done to your hand. 

117. It is generally impossible to date with precision art of 
the archaic period—often difficult to date even that of the 
central three hundred years. I will not weary you with futile 
minor divisions of time; here are three coins (Plate VIL.) 
roughly, but decisively, characteristic of the three ages. The 
first is an early coin of Tarentum. The city was founded as 
you know, by the Spartan Phalanthus, late in the eighth 
century. I believe the head is meant for that of Apollo 
Archegetes, it may however be Taras, the son of Poseidon ; it 
is no matter to us at present whom it is meant for, but the 
fact that we cavnot know, is itself of the greatest import. We 
cannot say, with any certainty, unless by discovery of some 
collateral evidence, whether this head is intended for that of 
a god, or demi-god, or a mortal warrior. Ought not that to 
disturb some of your thoughts respecting Greek idealism? 
Farther, if by investigation we discover that the head is meant 
for that of Phalanthus, we shall know nothing of the charac- 
ter of Phalanthus from the face; for there is no portraiture 
at this early time. 

118. The second coin is of Ainus in Macedonia; probably 
of the fifth or early fourth century, and entirely characteristic 
of the central period. This we know to represent the face of 
a god—Hermes. The third coin isa king’s, nota city’s. I 
will not tell you, at this moment, what king’s; but only that 
it is a late coin of the third period, and that it is as distinct 
in purpose as the coin of Tarentum is obscure. We know of 
this coin, that it represents no god nor demi-god, but a mere 
mortal; and we know precisely, from the portrait, what that 
mortal’s face was like. 

119. A glance at the three coins, as they are set side by 
side, will now show you the main differences in the three great 
Greek styles. The archaic coin is sharp and hard ; every line 
decisive and numbered, set unhesitatingly in its place ; nothing 


356 ARATRA PEHNTELICI, 


is wrong, though everything incomplete, and, to us who have 
seen finer art, ugly. The central coin is as decisive and clear 
in arrangement of masses, but its contours are completely 
rounded and finished. There is no character in its execution 
so prominent that you can give an epithet to the style. It is 
not hard, it is not soft, it is not delicate, it is not coarse, it is 
not grotesque, it is not beautiful ; and I am convinced, unless 
you had been told that this is fine central Greek art, you 
would have seen nothing at all in it to interest you. Do not 
let yourselves be anywise forced into admiring it; there is, 
indeed, nothing more here, than an approximately true ren- 
dering of a healthy youthful face, without the sh¢htest attempt 
to give an expression of activity, cunning, nobility, or any 
other attribute of the Mercurial mind. Extreme simplicity, 
unpretending vigour of work, which claims no admiration 
either for minuteness or dexterity, and suggests no idea of 
effort at all; refusal of extraneous ornament, and perfectly 
arranged disposition of counted masses in a sequent order, 
whether in the beads, or the ringlets of hair; this is all you 
have to be pleased with; neither will you ever find, in the 
best Greek Art, more. You might at first suppose that the 
chain of beads round the cap was an extraneous ornament ; 
but I have little doubt that it is as definitely the proper fillet 
for the head of Hermes, as the olive for Zeus, or corn for 
Triptolemus. The cap or petasus cannot have expanded edges, 
there is no room for them on the coin ; these must be under- 
stood, therefore ; but the nature of the cloud-petasus is ex- 
plained by edging it with beads, representing either dew or 
hail. The shield of Athena often bears white pellets for hail, 
in like manner. 

120. The third coin will, I think, at once strike you by 
what we moderns should eall its “vigour of character.” 
You may observe also that the features are finished with 
ereat care and subtlety, but at the cost of simplicity and 
breadth. But the essential difference between it and the 
central art, is its disorder in design—you see the locks of hair 
cannot be counted any longer—they are entirely dishevelled 
and irregular. Now the individual character may, or may not 


LIEKEN ESs. 357 


he, a sign of decline ; but the licentiousness, the casting loose 
of the masses in the design, is an infallible one. The effort 
at portraiture is good for art if the men to be portrayed are 
good men, not otherwise. In the instance before you, the 
head is that of Mithridates VI. of Pontus, who had, indeed, 
the good qualities of being a linguist and a patron of the arts; 
but as you will remember, murdered, according to report, his 
mother, certainly his brother, certainly his wives and sisters, 
I have not counted how many of his children, and from a hun- 
dred to a hundred and fifty thousand persons besides ; these 
last in a single day’s massacre. The effort to represent this 
kind of person is not by any means a method of study from 
life ultimately beneficial to art. 

121. This however is not the point I have to urge to-day. 
What I want you to observe is that, though the master of the 
great time does not attempt portraiture, he does attempt ani- 
mation. And as far as his means will admit, he succeeds in 
making the face—you might almost think—vulgarly animated ; 
as like a real face, literally, “as it can stare.” Yes: and its 
sculptor meant it to be so; and that was what Phidias meant 
his Jupiter to be, if he could manage it. Not, indeed, to be 
taken for Zeus himself; and yet, to be as like a living Zeus as 
art could make it. Perhaps you think he tried to make it look 
living only for the sake of the mob, and would not have tried 
to do so for connoisseurs. Pardon me; for real connoisseurs, 
he would, and did; and herein consists a truth which belongs 
to all the arts, and which I will at once drive home in your 
minds, as firmly as I can. 

122. All second-rate artists—(and remember, the second- 
rate ones are a loquacious multitude, while the great come 
only one or two in a century ; and then, silently)—all second- 
rate artists will tell you that the object of fine art is not re- 
semblance, but some kind of abstraction more refined than 
reality. Put that out of your heads at once. The object of 
the great Resemblant Arts is, and always has been, to resemble; 
and to resemble as closely as possible. It is the function of a 
good portrait to set the man before you in habit as he lived, 
and I would we had a few more that did so. It is the function 





358 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


of a good landscape to set the scene before you in its reality ; 
to make you, if it may be, think the clouds are flying, and 
the streams foaming. It is the function of the best sculptor 
—the true Dedalus—to make stillness look like breathing, 
and marble look like flesh. 

123. And in all great times of art, this purpose is as naively 
expressed as it is steadily held. All the talk about abstraction 
belongs to periods of decadence. In living times, people see 
something living that pleases them ; and they try to make it 
live for ever, or to make it something as like it as possible, that 
will last for ever. They paint their statues, and inlay the eyes 
with jewels, and set real crowns on their heads; they finish, 
in their pictures, every thread of embroidery, and would fain, 
if they could, draw every leaf upon the trees. And their only 
verbal expression of conscious success is, that they have made 
their work ‘look real.” 

124. You think all that very wrong. So did I, once ; but 
it was I that was wrong. <A long time ago, before ever I had 
seen Oxford, I painted a picture of the Lake of Como, for my 
father. It was not at all like the Lake of Como; but I thought 
it rather the better for that. My father differed with me ; and 
objected particularly to a boat with a red and yellow awning, 
which I had put into the most conspicuous corner of my draw- 
ing. I declared this boat to be “necessary to the composi- 
tion.” My father not the less objected, that he had never seen 
such a boat, either at Como or elsewhere ; and suggested that 
if IT would make the lake look a little more like water, I should 
be under no necessity of explaining its nature by the presence 
of floating objects. I thought him at the time a very simple 
person for his pains ; but have since learned, and it is the very 
gist of all practical matters, which, as professor of fine art, I 
have now to tell you, that the great point in painting a lake is 
—to get it to look like water. 

125. So far, so good. We lay it down for a first principle, 
that our graphic art, whether painting or sculpture, is to pro- 
duce something which shall look as like Nature as possible. 
But now we must go one step farther, and say that it is to 
produce what shall look like Nature to people who know what 


LIKENESS. 309 


Nature is like! You see this is at once a great restriction, as 
well as a great exaltation of our aim. Our business is not to 
deceive the simple; but to deceive the wise! Here, for in- 
stance, is a modern Italian print, representing, to the best of 
its power, St. Cecilia, in a brilliantly realistic manner. And 
the fault of the work is not in its earnest endeavour to show 
St. Cecilia in habit as she lived, but in that the effort could 
only be successful with persons unaware of the habit St, Ce- 
cilia lived in. And this condition of appeal only to the wise 
increases the difficulty of imitative resemblance so greatly, 
that, with only average skill or materials, we must surrender 
all hope of it, and be content with an imperfect representa- 
tion, true as far as it reaches, and such as to excite the imagi- 
nation of a wise beholder to complete it ; though falling very 
far short of what either he or we should otherwise have de- 
sired. Tor instance, here is a suggestion, by Sir Joshua Rey- 
nolds, of the general appearance of a British Judge—requir- 
ing the imagination of a very wise beholder indeed, to fill it 
up, or even at first to discover what it is meant for. Never- 
theless, it is better art than the Italian St. Cecilia, because the 
artist, however little he may have done to represent his knowl- 
edge, does, indeed, know altogether what a Judge is like, and 
appeals only to the criticism of those who know also. 

126. There must be, therefore, two degrees of truth to be 
looked for in the good graphic arts; one, the commonest, 
which, by any partial or imperfect sign conveys to you an idea 
which you must complete for yourself; and the other, the 
finest, a representation so perfect as to leave you nothing to 
be farther accomplished by this independent exertion ; but to 
give you the same feeling of possession and presence which 
you would experience from the natural object itself. For in- 
stance of the first, in this representation of a rainbow,* the 
artist has no hope that, by the black lines of engraving, he can 
deceive you into any belief of the rainbow’s being there, but 
he gives indication enough of what he intends, to enable you 
to supply the rest of the idea yourself, providing always you 
know beforehand what a rainbow is lke. But in this drawing 

* In Durer’s ‘‘ Melencholia.” 


060 ARATRA PENTELICI’ 


of the falls of Terni,* the painter has strained his skill to the 
utmost to give an actually deceptive resemblance of the iris, 
dawning and fading among the foam. So far as he has not 
actually deceived you, it is not because he would not have 
done so if he could; but only because his colours and science 
have fallen short of his desire. They have fallen so little short 
that, in a good light, you may all but believe the foam and 
the sunshine are drifting and changing among the rocks. 

127. And after looking a little while, you will begin to re- 
eret that they are not so: you will feel that, lovely as the 
drawing is, you would like far better to see the real place, and 
the goats skipping among the rocks, and the spray floating 
above the fall. And this is the true sign of the greatest art 
—to part voluntarily with its greatness;—to make itself poor 
and unnoticed ; but so to exalt and set forth its theme that 
you may be fain to see the theme instead of it. So that you 
have never enough admired a great workman’s doing till you 
have begun to despise it. The best homage that could be paid 
to the Athena of Phidias would be to desire rather to see the 
living goddess ; and the loveliest Madonnas of Christian art 
fall short of their due power, if they do not make their be- 
holders sick at heart to see the living Virgin. 

128. We have then, for our requirement of the finest art 
(sculpture, or anything else), that it shall be so like the 
thing it represents as to please those who best know or can 
conceive the original; and, if possible, please them decep- 
tively—its final triumph being to deceive even the wise; 
and (the Greeks thought) to please even the Immortals, who 
were so wise as to be undeceivable. So that you get the 
Greek, thus far entirely true, idea of perfectness in sculpture, 
expressed to you by what Phalaris says, at first sight of the 
bull of Perilaus, ‘“‘It only wanted motion and bellowing to 
seem alive ; and as’soon as I saw it, I cried out, it ought to 
be sent to the god.” To Apollo, for only he, the undeceiv- 
able, could thoroughly understand such sculpture, and per- 
fectly delight in it. 

129, And with this expression of the Greek ideal of seulpt-- 


* Turner’s, in the Hakewill series. 


LIKENESS. 361 


ure, I wish you to join the early Italian, summed in a single line 
by Dante—‘“ non vide me’ di me, chi vide ‘1 vero.” Read the 
12th canto of the “ Purgatory,” and learn that*whole passage 
by heart; and if ever you chance to go to Pistoja, look at 
La Robbia’s coloured porcelain bas-reliefs of the seven works 
of Mercy on the front of the hospital there; and note es- 
pecially the faces of the two sick men—one at the point of 
death, and the other in the first peace and long-drawn breath- 
ing of health after fever—and you will know what Dante 
meant by the preceding line, ‘‘ Morti li morti, e 1 vivi paren 
Vivi.” 

130. But now, may we not ask farther,—is it impossible 
for art such as this, prepared for the wise, to please the 
simple also? Without entering on the awkward questions 
of degree, how many the wise can be, or how much men 
should know, in order to be rightly called wise, may we not 
conceive an art to be possible, which would deceive every- 
body, or everybody worth deceiving? I showed you at my 
first lecture, a little ringlet of Japan ivory, as a type of ele- 
mentary bas-relief touched with colour; and in your rudi- 
mentary series you have a drawing by Mr. Burgess, of one of 
the little fishes enlarged, with every touch of the chisel fac- 
similed on the more visible scale; and showing the little 
black bead inlaid for the eye, which in the original is hardly 
to be seen without a lens. You may, perhaps be surprised, 
when I tell you, that (putting the question of subject aside 
for the moment, and speaking only of the mode of execution 
and aim at resemblance), you have there a perfect example of 
the Greek ideal of method in sculpture. And you will 
admit that, to the simplest person whom we could introduce 
as a critic, that fish would be a satisfactory, nay, almost a 
deceptive fish ; while to any one caring for subtleties of art, I 
need not point out that every touch of the chisel is applied 
with consummate knowledge, and that it would be impossible 
to convey more truth and life with the given quantity of 
workmanship. 

131. Here is, indeed, a drawing by Turner, (Edu. 131), 
in which with some fifty times the quantity of labour, and 


362 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


far more highly educated faculty of sight, the artist has 
expressed some qualities of lustre and colour which only 
very wise persons indeed could perceive ina John Dory; 
and this piece of paper contains, therefore, much more, and 
more subtle, art, than the Japan ivory ; but are we sure that 
it is therefore greater art? or that the painter was better 


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employed in producing this drawing, which only one person 
can possess, and only one in a hundred enjoy, than he would 
have been in producing two or three pieces on a larger scale, 
which should have been at once accessible to, and enjoyable 
by, a number of simpler persons? Suppose for instance, 
that Turner, instead of faintly touching this outline, on white 
paper, with his camel’s hair pencil, had struck the main forms 
of his fish into marble, thus (Fig. 7): and instead of colouring 
the white paper so delicately that, perhaps, only a few of the 
most keenly observant artists in England can see it at all, had, 


LIKENESS. 363 


with his strong hand, tinted the marble with a few colours, 
deceptive to the people, and harmonious to the initiated ; 
suppose that he had even conceded so much to the spirit of 
popular applause as to allow of a bright glass bead being inlaid 
for the eye, in the Japanese manner ; and that the enlarged, 
deceptive, and popularly pleasing work had been carved on 
the outside of a great building,—say Fishmongers’ Hall,— 
where everybody commercially connected with Billingsgate 
could have seen it, and ratified it with the wisdom of the 
market ;—might not the art have been greater, worthier, and 
kinder in such use ? 

132. Perhaps the idea does not once approve itself to you 
of having your public buildings covered with ornaments like 
this ; but pray, remember that the choice of subject is an ethi- 
cal question, not now before us. All Task you to decide is 
whether the method is right, and would be pleasant in giving 
the distinctiveness to pretty things, which it has here given 
to what, I suppose it may be assumed, you feel to be an ugly 
thing. Of course, I must note parenthetically, such realistic 
work is impossible in a country where the buildings are to be 
discoloured by coal-smoke ; but so is all fine sculpture, whatso- 
ever ; and the whiter, the worse its chance. For that which 
is prepared for private persons, to be kept under cover, will, 
of necessity, degenerate into the copyism of past work, 
or merely sensational and sensual forms of present life, unless 
there be a governing school addressing the populace, for 
their instruction, on the outside of buildings. So that, as I 
partly warned you in my third lecture, you can simply have 
no sculpture in a coal country. Whether you like coals or 
carvings best, is no business of mine. I merely have to 
assure you of the fact that they are incompatible. 

But, assuming that we are again, some day, to become a 
civilized and governing race, deputing ironmongery, coal- 
digging, and lucre-digging, to our slaves in other countries, 
it is quite conceivable that, with an increasing knowledge of 
natural history, and desire for such knowledge, what is now 
done by careful, but inefficient, woodcuts, and in ill-coloured 
engravings, might be put in quite permanent sculptures, with 


364 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


inlay of variegated precious stones, on the outside of build- 
ines, where such pictures would be little costly to the peo. 
ple ; and in a more popular manner still, by Robbia ware and 
Palissy ware, and inlaid majolica, which would differ from the 
housewives’ present favourite decoration of plates above her 
kitchen dresser, by being every piece of it various, instructive, 
and universally visible. 

133. You hardly know, I suppose, whether I am speaking 
in jest or earnest. In the most solemn earnest, I assure you ; 
though such is the strange course of our popular life that 
all the irrational arts of destruction are at once felt to be 
earnest ; while any plan for those of instruction on a grand 
scale, sounds like a dream or jest. Still, Ido not absolutely 
propose to decorate our public buildings with sculpture 
wholly of this character; though beast, and fowl, and creep- 
ing things, and fishes, might all find room on such a building 
as the Solomon’s House of a New Atlantis ; and some of them 
might even become symbolic of much to us again. Passing 
through the Strand, only the other day, for instance, I saw 
four highly finished and delicately coloured pictures of cock- 
fighting, which, for imitative quality, were nearly all that 
could be desired, going far beyond the Greek cock of Himera; 
and they would have delighted a Greek’s soul, if they had 
meant as much asa Greek cock-fight ; but they were only 
types of the “ édoudxas adéxtwp,” and of the spirit of home 
contest, which has been so fatal lately to the Bird of France ; 
and not of the defence of one’s own barnyard, in thought of 
which the Olympians set the cock on the pillars of their 
chariot course ; and gave it goodly alliance in its battle, as 
you may see here, in what is left of the angle of mouldering 
marble in the chair of the priest of Dionusos. The cast of it, 
from the centre of the theatre under the Acropolis, is in the 
British Museum ; and I wanted its spiral for you, and this 
kneeling Angel of Victory ;—it is late Greek art, but nobly 
systematic flat bas-relief. So Iset Mr. Burgess to draw it ; 
but neither he nor I for a little while, could make out what 
the Angel of Victory was kneeling for. His attitude is an 
ancient and grandly conventional one among the Egyptians; 


LIKENESS. 365 


and I was tracing it back to a kneeling goddess of the great- 
est dynasty of the Pharaohs—a goddess of Evening, or Death, 
laying down the sun out of her right hand ;—when, one bright 
day, the shadows came out clear on the Athenian throne, and 
I saw that my Angel of Victory was only backing a cock at a 
cock-fight. 

134. Still, as I have said, there is no reason why sculpture, 
even for simplest persons, should confine itself to imagery of 
fish, or fowl, or four-footed things. 

We go back to our first principle: we ought to carve noth- 
ing but what is honourable. And you are offended, at this 
moment, with my fish, (as I believe, when the first sculptures 
appeared on the windows of this museum, offence was taken 
at the unnecessary introduction of cats), these dissatisfactions 
being properly felt by your ‘‘ vots trav tywrator.” For in- 
deed, in all cases, our right judgment must depend on our 
wish to give honour only to things and creatures that deserve 
it. 

135. And now I must state to you another principle of 
veracity, both in sculpture, and all following arts, of wider 
scope than any hitherto examined. We have seen that sculpt- 
ure is to be a true representation of true external form. 
Much more is it to be a representation of true internal emo- 
tion. You must carve only what you yourself see as you see 
it; but, much more, you must carve only what you yourself 
feel, as you feel it. You may no more endeavour to feel 
through other men’s souls, than to see with other men’s eyes. 
Whereas generally now in Europe and America, every man’s 
energy is bent upon acquiring some false emotion, not his 
own, but belonging to the past, or to other persons, because 
he has been taught that such and such a result of it will be 
fine. Every attempted sentiment in relation to art is hypo- 
critical ; our notions of sublimity, of grace, or pious serenity, 
are all second hand ; and we are practically incapable of de- 
signing so much asa bell-handle or a door-knocker without 
borrowing the first notion of it from those who are gone— 
where we shall not wake them with our knocking. I would 
we could. 


306 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


136. In the midst of this desolation we have nothing to 
count on for real growth, but what we can find of honest lik- 
ing and longing, in ourselves and in others. We must dis- 
cover, if we would healthily advance, what things are verily 
TyuwoTata among us; and if we delight to honour the dis- 
honourable, consider how, in future, we may better bestow 
our likings. Now it appears to me from all our popular 
declarations, that we, at present, honour nothing so much as 
liberty and independence ; and no person so much as the Free 
man and Self-made man, who will be ruled by no one, and 
has been taught, or helped, by no one. And the reason I 
chose a fish for you as the first subject of sculpture, was that 
in men who are free and self-made, you have the nearest ap- 
proach, humanly possible, to the state of the fish, and finely 
organized ép7erov. You get the exact phrase in Habakkuk, if 
you take the Septuagint text.—“ oujoes rods avOpurous ws TOUS 
ix$vas THs Padacons, kat ws Ta épTeTa TA OK ExXoVTA AyoUpevov.” 
“Thou wilt make men as the fishes of the sea, and as the 
reptile things, that have no ruler over them.” And it chanced 
that as I was preparing this lecture, one of our most able and 
popular prints gave me a woodcut of the “self-made man,” 
specified as such, so vigorously drawn, and with so few 
touches, that Phidias or Turner himself could scarcely have 
done it better ; so that I had only to ask my assistant to en- 
large it with accuracy, and it became comparable with my 
fish at once. Of course it is not given by the caricaturist as 
an admirable face ; only, Iam enabled by his skill to set be- 
fore you, without any suspicion of unfairness on my part, the 
expression to which the life we profess to think most honour- 
able, naturally leads. If we were to take the hat off, you see 
how nearly the profile corresponds with that of the typical 
fish. 

137. Such, then, being the definition by your best popular 
art, of theideal of feature at which we are gradually arriving by 
self-manufacture ; when I place opposite to it (in Plate VIII) 
the profile of a man not in any wise self-made, neither by the 
law of his own will, nor by the love of his own interest—nor 
capable, for a moment, of any kind of ‘ Independence,” or of 


‘NVI AQVN-A1GS AHL GNV ASNOVUAY AO OTTOdVY AHI— TITA ALVIg 








LIKENTSS, 367 


the idea of independence ; but wholly dependent upon, and 
subjected to, external influence of just law, wise teaching, and 
trusted love and truth, in his fellow-spirits ;—setting before 
you, [ say, this profile of a God-made instead of a self-made, 
man, I know that you will feel, on the instant, that you are 
brought into contact with the vital elements of human art; 
and that this, the sculpture of the good, is indeed the only 
permissible sculpture. 

138. A God-made man, I say. The face, indeed, stands as 
a symbol of more than man in its sculptor’s mind. For as I 
gave you, to lead your first effort in the form of leaves, the 
sceptre of Apollo, so this, which I give you as the first type of 
rightness in the form of flesh, is the countenance of the holder 
of that sceptre, the Sun-God of Syracuse. But there is noth- 
ing in the face (nor did the Greek suppose there was) more 
perfect than might be seen in the daily beauty of the creat- 
ures the Sun-God shone upon, and whom his strength and 
honour animated. This is not an ideal, but a quite literally 
true, face of a Greek youth; nay, I‘will undertake to show 
you that it is not supremely beautiful, and even to surpass it 
altogether with the literal portrait of an Italian one. It is in 
verity no more than the form habitually taken by the features 
of a well educated young Athenian or Sicilian citizen; and 
the one requirement for the sculptors of to-day is not, as it 
has been thought, to invent the same ideal, but merely to see 
the same reality. 

Now, you know I told you in my fourth lecture, that the 
beginning of art was in getting our country clean and our 
people beautiful, and you supposed that to be a statement ir- 
relevant to my subject ; just as, at this moment, you perhaps 
think, [am quitting the great subject of this present lecture 
—the method of likeness-making—and letting myself branch 
into the discussion of what things-we are to make likeness of. 
But you shall see hereafter that the method of imitating a 
beautiful thing must be different from the method of imitat- 
ing an ugly one; and that, with the change in subject from 
what is dishonourable to what is honourable, there will be in- 
volved a parallel change in the management of tools, of lines, 


368 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


and of colours. So that before I can determine for you how 
you are to imitate, you must tell me what kind of face you 
wish to imitate. The best draughtsmen in the world could 
not draw this Apollo in ten scratches, though he can draw the 
self-made man. Still less this nobler Apollo of Ionian Greece, 
(Plate IX.) in which the incisions are softened into a harmony 
like that of Correggio’s painting. So that you see the method 
itself,—the choice between black incision or fine sculpture, 
and perhaps, presently, the choice between colour or no 
colour, will depend on what you have to represent. Colour 
may be expedient for a glistening dolphin or a spotted fawn ; 
—perhaps inexpedient for white Poseidon, and gleaming 
Dian. So that, before defining the laws of sculpture, I am 
compelled to ask you, what you mean to carve ; and that, little 
as you think it, is asking you how you mean to live, and what 
the laws of your State are to be, for they determine those of 
your statue. You can only have this kind of face to study 
from, in the sort of state that produced it. And you will find 
that sort of state described in the beginning of the fourth 
book of the laws of Plato ; as founded, for one thing, on the 
conviction that of all the evils that can happen to a state, 
quantity of money is the greatest ! petlov Kakov, ws éros imei, 
mode. ovdev av ytlyvowto, eis yevvaiwy Kat dixaiwv 7OGv Krjow, “ for, 
to speak shortly, no greater evil, matching each against each, 
can possibly happen to a city, as adverse to its forming just 
or generous character,” than its being full of silver and gold. 

139. Of course, the Greek notion may be wrong, and ours 
right, only—és éros «iretv—you can have Greek sculpture 
only on that Greek theory: shortly expressed by the words 
put into the mouth of Poverty herself, in the Plutus of Aris- 
tophanes “Tod wAovTov tapéxw BeAtiovas dvdpas, Kal THY yvwpyy, 
kat tHv ideav,” “I deliver to you better men than the God of 
Money can, both in imagination and feature.” So on the 
other hand, this ichthyoid, reptilian, or mono-chondyloid 
ideal of the self-made man can only be reached, universally, 
by a nation which holds that poverty, either of purse or spirit, 
—but especially the spiritual character of being zrwxot ra 
rvevpart, is the lowest of degradations; and which believes 





PLATE IX.—APOLLO CIIRYSOCOMES OF CLAZOMENG. 


The Library 
of the 
University of Htinois. 





LIKENESS. 369 


that the desire of wealth is the first of manly and moral sen- 
timents. As I have been able to get the popular ideal repre- 
sented by its own living art, so I can give you this popular 
faith in its own living words; but in words meant seriously 
and not at all as caricature, from one of our leading journals, 
professedly esthetic also in its very name, the Spectator, of 
August 6th, 1870. 

“Mr. Ruskin’s plan,” it says, “ would make England poor, 
in order that she might be cultivated, and refined and artistic. 
A wilder proposal was never broached by a man of ability ; 
and it might be regarded as a proof that the assiduous study 
of art emasculates the intellect, and even the moral sense. Such 
a theory almost warrants the contempt with which art is often 
regarded by esseutially intellectual natures, like Proudhon ” 
(sic). ‘Art is noble as the flower of life, and the creations of 
a Titian are a great heritage of the race ; but if England could 
secure high art and Venetian glory of colour only by the sacri- 
fice of her manufacturing supremacy, and by the acceptance of 
national poverty, then the pursuit of such artistic achievements 
would imply that we had ceased to possess natures of manly 
streneth, or to know the meaning of moral aims. If we must 
choose between a Titian and a Lancashire cotton mill, then, 
in the name of manhood and of morality, give us the cotton 
mill. Only the dilettantism of the studio; that dilettantism 
which loosens the moral no less than the intellectual fibre, and 
which is as fatal to rectitude of action as to correctness of 
reasoning power, would make a different choice.” 

You see also, by this interesting and most memorable pas- 
sage, how completely the question is admitted to be one of 
ethics—the only real point at issue being, whether this face 
or that is developed on the truer moral principle. 

140. I assume, however, for the present, that this Apolline 
type is the kind of form you wish to reach and to represent. 
And now observe, instantly, the whole question of manner of 
imitation is altered for us. The fins of the fish, the plumes of 
the swan, and the flowing of the Sun-God’s hair are all repre- 
sented by incisions—but the incisions do sufficiently repre- 
sent the fin and feather,—they insufficiently represent the 


370 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


hair. If I chose, with a little more care and labour, I could 
absolutely get the surface of the scales and spines of the fish, 
and the expression of its mouth ; but no quantity of labour 
would obtain the real surface of a tress of Apollo’s hair, and 
the full expression of his mouth. So that we are compelled 
at once to call the imagination to help us, and say to it, You 
know what the Apollo Chrysocomes must be like ; finish all 
this for yourself. Now, the law under which imagination 
works, is just that of other good workers. ‘‘ You must give 
me clear orders ; show me what I have to do, and where I am 
to begin, and let me alone.” And the orders can be given, 
quite clearly, up to a certain point, in form ; but they cannot 
be given clearly in colour, now that the subject is subtle. All 
beauty of this high kind depends on harmony ; let but the 
slightest discord come into it, and the finer the thing is, the 
more fatal will be the flaw. Now, on a flat surface, I can 
command my colour to be precisely what and where I mean 
it to be; on around one I cannot. For all harmony depends 
first, on the fixed proportion of the colour of the light, to that 
of the relative shadow ; and therefore, if I fasten my colour, I 
must fasten my shade. But ona round surface the shadow 
changes at every hour of the day ; and therefore, all colouring 
which is expressive of form, is impossible ; and if the form is 
fine, (and here there is nothing but what is fine), you may bid 
farewell to colour. 

141. Farewell to colour ; that is to say, if the thing is to be 
seen distinctly, and you have only wise people to show it to ; 
but if it is to be seen indistinctly, at a distance, colour may 
become explanatory ; and if you have simple people to show 
it to, colour may be necessary to excite their imaginations, 
though not to excite yours. And the art is great always 
by meeting its conditions in the straightest way ; and if it is 
to please a multitude of innocent and bluntly-minded persons, 
must express itself in the terms that will touch them ; else it 
is not good. And I have to trace for you through the history 
of the past, and possibilities of the future, the expedients used 
by great sculptors to obtain clearness, impressiveness, or 
splendour ; and the manner of their appeal to the people, 


ee 


LIKENESS. 371 


under various light and shadow, and with reference to differ- 
ent degrees of public intelligence : such investigation resoly- 
ing itself again and again, as we proceed, into questions 
absolutely ethical ; as for instance, whether colour is to be 
bright or dull, that is to say, for a populace cheerful or heart- 
less ;—whether it is to be delicate or strong, that is to say, 
for a populace attentive or careless; whether it is to be a 
background like the sky, for a procession of young men and 
maidens, because your populace revere life—or the shadow of 
a vault behind a corpse, stained with drops of blackened blood, 
for a populace taught to worship Death. Livery critical deter- 
mination of rightness depends on the obedience to some ethic 
law, by the most rational and, therefore, simplest, means. 
And you see how it depends most, of all things, on whether 
you are working for chosen persons or for the mob; for the 
joy of the boudoir, or of the Borgo. And if for the mob, 
whether the mob of Olympia, or of St. Antoine. Phidias, 
showing his Jupiter for the first time, hides behind the 
temple door to listen, resolved afterwards, ‘“ puduilev rd 
dyaApa pds TO Tois TAEoToLs SoKody, ob yap wyEtTO puKpav elvat 
oupPovlyy Syuov tocotvrov,”’ and truly, as your people is, in 
judgment, and in multitude, so must your sculpture be, in 
glory. An elementary principle which has been too long out 
of mind. 

142. I leave you to consider it, since, for some time, we 
shall not again be able to take up the inquiries to which it 
leads. But, ultimately, I do not doubt that you will rest 
satisfied in these following conclusions : 

1. Not only sculpture, but all the other fine arts, must be 
for the people. 

2. They must be didactic to the people, and that as their chief 
end. The structural arts, didactic in their manner; the 
graphic arts in their matter also. : 

3. And chiefly the great representative and imaginative arts, 
that is to say, the drama, and sculpture, are to teach what is 
noble in past history, and lovely in existing human and or- 
ganic life. 

4, And the test of right manner of execution in these arts, 


372 ARATRA PHNTELICI. 


is that they strike, in the most emphatic manner, the rank of 
popular minds to which they are addressed. 

5. And the test of utmost fineness in execution in these 
arts, is that they make themselves be forgotten in what they 
represent ; and so fulfil the words of their greatest Master, 


‘THE BEST, IN THIS KIND, ARE BUT SHADOWS.” 


LECTURE V. 
STRUCTURE. 


December, 1870. 


143. On previous occasions of addressing you, I have en- 
deavoured to show you, first, how sculpture is distinguished 
from other arts; then its proper subjects, then its proper 
method in the realization of these subjects. To-day, we 
must, in the fourth place, consider the means at its command 
for the accomplishment of these ends ; the nature of its ma- 
terials ; and the mechanical or other difficulties of their treat- 
ment. : 

And however doubtful we may have remained, as to the 
justice of Greek ideals, or propriety of Greek methods of rep- 
resenting them, we may be certain that the example of the 
Greeks will be instructive in all practical matters relating to 
this great art, peculiarly theirown. I think even the evidence 
I have already laid before you is enough to convince you, 
that it was by rightness and reality, not by idealism or delight- 
fulness only, that their minds were finally guided ; and I am 
sure that, before closing the present course, I shall be able so 
far to complete that evidence, as to prove to you that the 
commonly received notions of classic art are, not only un- 
founded, but even in many respects, directly contrary to the 
truth. You are constantly told that Greece idealized what- 
ever she contemplated. She did the exact contrary : she real- 
ized and verified it. Youare constantly told she sought only 
the beautiful. She sought, indeed, with all her heart ; but 


STRUCTURE. 373 


she found, because she never doubted that the search was to 
be consistent with propriety and common sense. And the 
first thing you will always discern in Greek work is the first 
which you ought to discern in all work; namely, that the 
object of it has been rational, and has been obtained by sim- 
ple and unostentatious means. 

144. “That the object of the work has been rational!” 
Consider how much that implies. That it should be by all 
means seen to have been determined upon, and carried 
through, with sense and discretion ; these being gifts of intel- 
lect far more precious than any knowledge of mathematics, or 
of the mechanical resources of art. Therefore, also, that it 
should be a modest and temperate work, a structure fitted to 
the actual state of men ; proportioned to their actual size, as 
animals,—to their average streneth,—to their true necessities, 
—and to the degree of easy command they have over the 
forces and substances of nature. 

145. You see how much this law excludes! All that is 
fondly magnificent, insolently ambitious, or vainly difficult. 
There is, indeed, such a thing as Magnanimity in design, but 
never unless it be joined also with modesty and Hquanimity. 
Nothing extravagant, monstrous, strained, or singular, can be 
structurally beautiful. No towers of Babel envious of the 
skies ; no pyramids in mimicry of the mountains of the earth ; 
no streets that are a weariness to traverse, nor temples that 
make pigmies of the worshippers. 

It is one of the primal merits and decencies of Greek work 
that it was, on the whole, singularly small in scale, and wholly 
within reach of sight, to its finest details. And, indeed, the 
best buildings that I know are thus modest; and some of 
the best are minute jewel cases for sweet sculpture. The 
Parthenon would hardly attract notice, if it were set by the 
Charing Cross Railway Station: the Church of the Miracolhi, 
at Venice, the Chapel of the Rose, at Lucca, and the Chapel 
of the Thorn, at Pisa, would not, I suppose, all three together, 
fill the tenth part, cube, of a transept of the Crystal Palace. 
And they are better so. 

146. In the chapter on Power in the “Seven Lamps of Archi- 


374 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


tecture,” I have stated what seems, at first, the reverse of what 
I am saying now; namely, that it is better to have one grand 
building than any number of mean ones. And that is true, 
but you cannot command grandeur by size till you can com- 
mand grace in minuteness ; and least of all, remember, will 
you so command it to-day, when magnitude has become the 
chief exponent of folly and misery, co-ordinate in the fra- 
ternal enormities of the Factory and Poorliouse,—the Bar- 
racks and Hospital. And the final law in this matter is, that 
if you require edifices only for the grace and health of man- 
kind, and build them without pretence and without chicanery, 
they will be sublime on a modest scale, and lovely with little 
decoration. 

147. From these principles of simplicity and temperance, 
two very severely fixed laws of construction follow ; namely, 
first, that our structure, to be beautiful, must be produced 
with tools of men; and secondly, that it must be composed 
of natural substances. First, I say, produced with tools of 
men. All fine art requires the application of the whole 
strength and subtlety of the body, so that such art is not pos- 
sible to any sickly person, but involves the action and force of 
a strong man’s arm from the shoulder, as well as the delicatest 
touch of his finger: and it is the evidence that this full and 
fine strength has been spent on it which makes the art execu- 
tively noble ; so that no instrument must be used, habitually, 
which is either too heavy to be delicately restrained, or too small 
and weak to transmit a vigorous impulse; much less any 
mechanical aid, such as would render the sensibility of the 
fingers ineffectual.* 

148. Of course, any kind of work in glass, or in metal, on a 

* Nothing is more wonderful, or more disgraceful among the forms 
of ignorance engendered by modern vulgar occupations in pursuit of 
gain, than the unconsciousness, now total, that fine art is essentially 
Athletic. I received a letter from Birmingham, some little time since, 
inviting me to see how much, in glass manufacture, ‘‘ machinery 
excelled rude hand work.” The writer had not the remotest concep 
tion that he might as well have asked me tu come and see a mechanical 
boat-race rowed by automata, and ‘*‘ how much machinery excelled rude 
arm-work.” 


STRUCTURE. 375 


large scale, involves some painful endurance of heat; and 
working in clay, some habitual endurance of cold; but the 
point beyond which the effort must not be carried is marked 
by loss of power of manipulation. As long as the eyes and 
fingers have complete command of the material (as a glass 
blower has, for instance, in doing fine ornamental work)— 
the law is not violated ; but all our great engine and furnace 
work, in gun-making and the like, is degrading to the intel- 
lect ; and no nation can long persist in it without losing many 
of its human faculties. Nay, even the use of machinery, other 
than the common rope and pully, for the lifting of weights, is 
degrading to architecture ; the invention of expedients for the 
raising of enormous stones has always been a characteristic of 
partly savage or corrupted races. A block of marble not 
larger than a cart with a couple of oxen could carry, and a 
eross-beam, with a couple of pulleys, raise, is as large as 
should generally be used in any building. The employment 
of large masses is sure to lead to vulgar exhibitions of geomet: 
rical arrangement,* and to draw away the attention from tha 
sculpture. In general, rocks naturally break into such pieces 
as the human beings that have to build with them can easily 
lift, and no larger should be sought for. 

149. In this respect, and in many other subtle ways, the 
law that the work is to be with tools of men is connected 
with the farther condition of its modesty, that it is to be 
wrought in substance provided by Nature, and to have a 
faithful respect to all the essential qualities of such substance. 

And here I must ask your attention to the idea, and, more 
than idea,—the fact, involved in that infinitely misused term, 
« Providentia,” when applied to the Divine Power. In its 
truest sense and scholarly use, it is a human virtue, [popjGeta ; 
the personal type of it is in Prometheus, and all the first 
power of réyvy, is from him, as compared to the weakness of 
days when men without foresight ‘“ éupov «ik mavra.” But, 
so far as we use the word ‘‘ Providence” as an attribute of the 
Maker and Giver of all things, it does not mean that in a 


*Such as the sculptureless arch of Waterloo Bridge, for instance, 
referred to in the Third Lecture, § 84. 


376 ARATRA PHNTELICTI. 


shipwreck He takes care of the passengers who are to be saved 
and takes none of those who are to be drowned ; but it does 
mean that every race of creatures is born into the world un- 
der circumstances of approximate adaptation to its necessities ; 
and, beyond all others, the ingenious and observant race of 
man is surrounded with elements naturally good for his food, 
pleasant to his sight, and suitable for the subjects of his in- 
genuity ;—the stone, metal, and clay of the earth he walks 
upon lending themselves at once to his hand, for all manner 
of workmanship. 

150. Thus, his truest respect for the law of the entire crea- 
tion is shown by his making the most of what he can get most 
easily ; and there is no virtue of art, nor application of com- 
mon sense, more sacredly necessary than this respect to the 
beauty of natural substance, and the ease of local use ; neither 
are there any other precepts of construction so vital as these 
—that you show all the streneth of your material, tempt none 
of its weaknesses, and do with it only what can be simply and 
permanently done. 

151. Thus, all good building will be with rocks, or pebbles, 
or burnt clay, but with no artificial compound ; all good paint- 
ing, with common oils and pigments on common canvas, paper, 
plaster, or wood,—admitting, sometimes for precious work, 
precious things, but all applied in a simple and visible way. 
The highest imitative art should not, indeed, at first sight, call 
attention to the means of it; but even that, at length, should 
do so distinctly, and provoke the observer to take pleasure in 
seeing how completely the workman is master of the particu- 
lar material he has used, and how beautiful and desirable a 
substance it was, for work of that kind. In oil painting its 
unctious quality is to be delighted in ; in fresco, its chalky 
quality; in glass, its transparency ; in wood, its grain; in 
marble, its softness; in porphyry, its hardness; in iron, its 
toughness. In a flint country, one should feel the delightful- 
ness of having flints to pick up, and fasten together into rug- 
ged walls. In a marble country one should be always more 
and more astonished at the exquisite colour and structure of 
marble ; in a slate country one should feel as if every rock 


STRUCTURE. O17 


cleft itself only for the sake of being built with con- 
veniently. 

152. Now, for sculpture, there are, briefly, two materials— 
Clay, and Stone; for glass is only a clay that gets clear and 
brittle as it cools, and metal a clay that gets opaque and 
tough as it cools. Indeed, the true use of gold in this world 
is only as a very pretty and very ductile clay, which you can 
spread as flat as you like, spin as fine as you like, and which 
will neither crack, nor tarnish. 

All the arts of sculpture in clay may be summed up under 
the word ‘‘ Plastic,” and all of those in stone, under the word 
“‘Glyptic.” 

153. Sculpture in clay will accordingly include all cast 
brick-work, pottery, and tile-work *—a somewhat important 
branch of human skill. Next to the potter’s work, you have 
all the arts in porcelain, glass, enamel, and metal ; everything, 
that is to say, playful and familiar in design, much of what is 
most felicitously inventive, and, in bronze or gold, most pre- 
cious and permanent. 

154. Sculpture in stone, whether granite, gem, or marble, 
while we accurately use the general term ‘“ elyptic” for it, 
may be thought of with, perhaps, the most clear force under 
the English word “engraving.” For, from the mere angular 
incision which the Greek consecrated in the triglyphs of his 
ereatest order of architecture, grow forth all the arts of bas- 
relief, and methods of localized groups of sculpture connected 
with each other and with architecture: as, in another direc- 
tion, the arts of engraving and wood-cutting theinselves. 

155. Over all this vast field of human skill the laws which I 
have enunciated to you rule with inevitable authority, embrac- 
ing the greatest, and consenting to the humblest, exertion ; 
strong to repress the ambition of nations, if fantastic and vain, 
but gentle to approve the efforts of children, made in accord- 
ance with the visible intention of the Maker of all flesh, and 


* It is strange, at this day, to think of the relation of the Athenian 
Ceramicus to the French Tile-fields, Tileries, or Tuileries ; and how 
these last may yet become—have already partly become—‘‘ the Potter’ 
field,” blood-bought. (December, 1870.) 


378 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


the Giver of all Intelligence. These laws, therefore, I now re 
peat, and beg of you to observe them as irrefragable. 

1. That the work is to be with tools of men. 

2. That it is to be in natural materials. 

3. That it is to exhibit the virtues of those materials, and 
aim at no quality inconsistent with them. 

4, That its temper is to be quiet and gentle, in harmony 
with common needs, and in consent to common intelli- 
gence. 

We will now observe the bearing of these laws on the ele- 
mentary conditions of the art at present under discussion. 

156. There is, first, work in baked clay, which contracts as 
it dries, and is very easily frangible. Then you must put no 
work into it requiring niceness in dimension, nor any so elabo- 
rate that it would be a great loss if it were broken, but as the 
clay yields at once to the hand, and the sculptor can do any- 
thing with it he likes, it is a material for him to sketch with 
and play with,—to record his fancies in, before they escape 
him—and to express roughly, for people who can enjoy such 
sketches, what he has not time to complete in marble. The 
clay, being ductile, lends itself to all softness of line; being 
easily frangible, it would be ridiculous to give it sharp edges, 
so that a blunt and massive rendering of grace.ul gesture will 
be its natural function ; but as it can be pinched, or pulled, 
or thrust in a moment into projection which it would take 
hours of chiselling to get in stone, it will also properly be 
used for all fantastic and grotesque form, not involving sharp 
edges. Therefore, what is true of chalk and charcoal, for 
painters, is equally true of clay, for sculptors; they are all 
most precious materials for true masters, but tempt the false 
ones into fatal license ; and to judge rightly of terra-cotta 
work is a far higher reach of skill in sculpture-criticism than 
to distinguish the merits of a finished statue. 

157. We have, secondly, work in bronze, iron, gold, and 
other metals ; in which the laws of structure are still more 
definite. 

All kinds of twisted and wreathen work on every scale be- 
come delightful when wrought in ductile or tenacious metal; 


STRUCTURE. 379 


but metal which is to be hammered into form separates itself 
into two great divisions—solid, and flat. 

(A.) In solid metal work, 7. e., metal cast thick enough to 
resist bending, whether it be hollow or not, violent and various 
projection may be admitted, which would be offensive in mar- 
ble; but no sharp edges, because it is difficult to produce 
them with the hammer. But since the permanence of the 
material justifies exquisiteness of workmanship, whatever del- 
icate ornamentation can be wrought with rounded surfaces 
may be advisedly introduced ; and since the colour of bronze 
or any other metal is not so pleasantly representative of flesh 
as that of marble, a wise sculptor will depend less on flesh 
contour, and more on picturesque accessories, which, though 
they would be vulgar if attempted in stone, are rightly enter- 
taining in bronze or silver. Verrochio’s statue 
of Colleone at Venice, Cellini’s Perseus at 
Florence, and Ghiberti’s gates at Florence, are 
models of bronze treatment. 

(B.) When metal is beaten thin, it becomes 
what is technically called “ plate,” (the flattened 
thing) and may be treated advisably in two ways ; 
one, by beating it out into bosses, the other by 
cutting it into strips and ramifications. The 
vast schools of goldsmith’s work and of iron dec- 
oration, founded on these two principles, have 
had the most powerful influences over general 
taste in all ages and countries. One of the sim- 
plest and most interesting elementary examples 
of the treatment of flat metal by cutting is the 
common branched iron bar, Fig. 8, used to close 
small apertures in countries possessing any good 
primitive style of ironwork, formed by alternate cuts on its 
sides, and the bending down of the several portions. The 
ordinary domestic window balcony of Verona is formed by 
mere ribands of iron, bent into curves as studiously refined 
as those of a Greek vase, and decorated merely by their own 
terminations in spiral volutes. 

All cast work in metal, unfinished by hand, is inadmissible 





Fig. 8, 


380 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


in any school of living art, since it cannot possess the perfec- 
tion of form due to a permanent substance ; and the continual 
sight of it is destructive of the faculty of taste: but metal 
stamped with precision, as in coins, is to sculpture what en- 
eraving is to painting. 

158. Thirdly. tone-sculpture divides itself into three 
schools: one in very hard material ; one in very soft, and one 
in that of centrally useful consistence, 

A. The virtue of work in hard material is the expression of 
form in shallow relief, or in broad contours; deep cutting in 
hard material is inadmissible, and the art, at once pompous 
and trivial, of gem engraving, has been in the last degree 
destructive of the honour and service of sculpture. 

B. The virtue of work in soft material is deep cutting, with 
studiously graceful disposition of the masses of light and 
shade. ‘The greater number of flamboyant churches of France 
are cut out of an adhesive. chalk; and the fantasy of their 
latest decoration was, in great part, induced by the facility of 
obtaining contrast of black space, undercut, with white tracery 
easily left in sweeping and interwoven rods—the lavish use of 
wood in domestic architecture materially increasing the habit 
of delight in branched complexity of line. These points, 
however, I must reserve for illustration in my lectures on ar- 
chitecture. To-day, I shall limit myself to the illustration of 
elementary sculptural structure in the best material ;—that is 
to say, in crystalline marble, neither soft enough to encourage 
the caprice of the workman, nor hard enough to resist his 
will. 

159. C. By the true ‘‘ Providence” of Nature, the rock 
which is thus submissive has been in some places stained with 
the fairest colours, and in others blanched into the fairest ab- 
sence of colour, that can be found to give harmony to inlay- 
ing, or dignity to form. The possession by the Greeks of 
their Aevxds Ai‘fos was indeed the first circumstance regulating 
the development of their art; it enabled them at once to ex- 
press their passion for light by executing the faces, hands, and 
feet of their dark wooden statues in white marble, so that 
what we look upon only with pleasure for fineness of texture 


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STRUCTURE. 381 


was to them an imitation of the luminous body of the deity 
shining from behind its dark robes; and ivory afterwards 
is employed in their best statues for its yet more soft and 
flesh-like brightness, receptive also of the most delicate colour 
—(therefore to this day the favourite ground of miniature 
painters). In like manner, the existence of quarries of peach- 
coloured marble within twelve miles of Verona, and of white 
marble and green serpentine between Pisa and Genoa, defined 
the manner both of sculpture and architecture for all the 
Gothic buildings of Italy. No subtlety of education could 
have formed a high school of art without these materials. 

160. Next to the colour, the fineness of substance which 
will take a perfectly sharp edge, is essential; and this not 
merely to admit fine delineation in the sculpture itself, but to 
secure a delightful precision in placing the blocks of which it 
is composed. Jor the possession of too fine marble, as far as 
regards the work itself, is a temptation instead of an advantage 
to an inferior sculptor ; and the abuse of the facility of under- 
cutting, especially of undercutting so as to leave profiles de- 
fined by an edge against shadow, is one of the chief causes of 
decline of style in such encrusted bas-reliefs as those of the 
Certosa of Pavia and its contemporary monuments. But no 
undue temptation ever exists as to the fineness of block: fit- 
ting ; nothing contributes to give so pure and healthy a tone 
to sculpture as the attention of the builder to the jointing of 
his stones; and his having both the power to make them fit so 
perfectly as not to admit of the slightest portion of cement 
showing externally, and the skill to insure, if needful, and to 
suggest always, their stability in cementless construction. 
Plate X. represents a piece of entirely fine Lombardic build- 
ing, the central portion of the arch in the Duomo of Verona, 
which corresponds to that of the porch of San Zenone, repre- 
sented in Plate I. In both these pieces of building, the only 
line that traces the architrave round the arch, is that of the 
masonry joint; yet this line is drawn with extremest subtlety, 
with intention of delighting the eye by its relation of varied 
curvature to the arch itself ; and it is just as much considered 
as the finest pen-line of a Raphael drawing. Every joint of 


382 ARATRA PENTELICL 


the stone is used, in like manner, as a thin black line, which 
the slightest sign of cement would spoil like a blot. And so 
proud is the builder of his fine jointing, and so fearless of 
any distortion or strain spoiling the adjustment afterwards, 
that in one place he runs his joint quite gratuitously through 
a bas-relief, and gives the keystone its only sign of pre-emi- 
nence by the minute inlaying of the head of the Lamb, into 
the stone of the course above. 

161. Proceeding from this fine jointing to fine draughts- 
manship, you have, in the very outset and earliest stage of 
sculpture, your flat stone surface given you as asheet of white 
paper, on which you are required to produce the utmost effect 
you can with the simplest means, cutting away as little of the 
stone as may be, to save both time and trouble ; and, above 
all, leaving the block itself, when shaped, as solid as you can, 
that its surface may better resist weather, and the carved parts 
be as much protected as possible by the masses left around 
them. 

162. The first thing to be done is clearly to trace the out- 
line of subject with an incision approximating in section to 
that of the furrow of a plough, only more equal-sided. A fine 
sculptor strikes it, as his chisel leans, freely, on marble; an 
Egyptian, in hard rock, cuts it sharp, as in cuneiform inserip- 
tions. In any case, you have a result somewhat like the 
upper figure, Plate XI., in which I show you the most ele- 
mentary indication of form possible, by cutting the outline of 
the typical archaic Greek head with an incision like that of a 
Greek triglyph, only not so precise in edge or slope, as it is to 
be modified afterwards. 

163. Now, the simplest thing we can do next, is to round 
off the flat surface within the incision, and put what form we 
can get into the feebler projection of it thus cbtained. The 
Keyptians do this, often with exquisite skill, and then, as I 
showed you in a former lecture, colour the whole—using the 
incision as an outline. Such a method of treatment is capable 
of good service in representing, at little cost of pains, subjects 
in distant effect, and common, or merely picturesque, subjects 
even near. To show you what it is capable of, and what 








OF SCULPTURE. 


Incised Outline and Opened Space. 


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“ 
~ 


the Library 
of the 


7 
Ss . 


STRUCTURE. 383 


coloured sculpture would be in its rudest type, I have pre- 
pared the coloured relief of the John Dory * as a natural his- 
tory drawing for distant effect. You-know, also, that I meant 
him to be ugly—as ugly as any creature can well be. In 
time, I hope to show you prettier things—peacocks and king- 
fishers,—butterflies and flowers, on grounds of gold, and the 
like, as they were in Byzantine work. I shall expect you, in 
right use of your esthetic faculties, to like those better than 
what I show you to-day. But it is now a question of method 
only ; and if you will look, after the lecture, first at the mere 
white relief, and then see how much may. be gained by a few 
dashes of colour, such as a practised workman could lay in a 
quarter of an hour,—the whole forming, if well done, almost a 
deceptive image—you will, at least, have the range of power 
in Egyptian sculpture clearly expressed to you. 

~ 164, But for fine sculpture, we must. advance by far other 
methods. If we carve the subject with real delicacy, the cast 
shadow of the incision will interfere with its outline, so that, 
for representation of beautiful things, you must clear away 
the ground about it, at all events for a little distance. As the 
law of work is to use the least pains possible, you clear it only 
just as far back as you need, and then for the sake of order 
and finish, you give the space a geometrical outline. By tak- 
ing, in this case, the simplest I can,—a circle,—I can clear 
the head with little labor in the removal of surface round it ; 
(see the lower figure in Plate XI.) 

~ 165. Now, these are the first terms of all well-constructed 
bas-relief. The mass you have to treat consists of a piece of 
stone, which, however you afterwards carve it, can but, at its 
most projecting point, reach the level of the external plane 
surface out of which it was mapped, and defined by a depres- 
sion round it ; that depression being at first a mere trench, 
then a' moat of certain width, of which the outer sloping bank 
is in contact, as a limiting geometrical line, with the laterally 
salient portions of sculpture. This, I repeat, is the primal 


-* This relief is now among the other casts which I have placed in the 
lower school in the University galleries. 


384 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


construction of good bas-relief, implying, first, perfect pro- 
tection to its surface from any transverse blow, and a geo- 
metrically limited space to be occupied by the design, into 
which it shall pleasantly (and as you shall ultimately see, 
ingeniously,) contract itself: implying, secondly, a determined 
depth of projection, which it shall rarely reach, and never ex- 
ceed: and implying, finally, the production of the whole piece 
with the least possible labor of chisel and loss of stone. 

166. And these, which are the first, are very nearly the last 
constructive laws of sculpture. You will be surprised to find 
how much they include, and how much of minor propriety in 
treatment their observance involves. 

In a very interesting essay on the architecture of the Par- 
thenon, by the professor of architecture of the Ecole Polytech- 
nique, M. Emile Boutmy, you will find it noticed that the 
Greeks do not usually weaken, by carving, the constructive 
masses of their building ; but put their chief sculpture in the 
empty spaces between the triglyphs, or beneath the roof. 
This is true; but in so doing, they merely build their panel 
instead of carving it; they accept no less than the Goths, the 
laws of recess and limitation, as being vital to the safety and 
dignity of their design; and their noblest recumbent statues 
are, constructively, the fillings of the acute extremity of a 
panel in the form of an obtusely summitted triangle. 

167. In gradual descent from that severest type, you will 
find that an immense quantity of sculpture of all times and 
styles may be generally embraced under the notion of a mass 
hewn out of, or, at least, placed in, a panel or recess, deepen- 
ing, it may be, into a niche; the sculpture being always de- 

signed with reference to its position in such recess; and, 
aie ae to the effect of the building out of which the re- 
cess is hewn. 

But, for the sake of simplifying our inquiry, I will at first 
suppose no surrounding protective ledge to exist, and that the 
area of stone we have to deal with is simply a flat slab, extant 
from a flat surface depressed all round it. 

168. A flat slab, observe. The flatness of surface is essen- 
tial to the problem of bas-relief. The lateral limit of the 





STRUCTURE. 385 


panel may, or may not, be required ; but the vertical limit of 
surface must be expressed ; and the art of bas-relief is to 
give the effect of true form on that condition. For observe, 
if nothing more were needed than to make first a cast of a 
solid form, then cut it in half, and apply the half of it to the 
flat surface ;—if, for instance, to carve a bas-relief of an ap- 
ple, all I had to do was to cut. my sculpture of the whole apple 
in half, and pin it to the wall, any ordinary trained sculptor, 
or even a mechanical workman, could produce bas-relief ; 
but the business is to carve a round thing out of a flat thing ; 
to carve an apple out of a biscuit !—to conquer, as a subtle 
Florentine has here conquered,* his marble, so as not only to 
eet motion into what is most rigidly fixed, but to get bound- 
lessness into what is most narrowly bounded ; and carve Ma- 
donna and Child, rolling clouds, flying angels, and space of 
heavenly air behind all, out of a film of stone not the third of 
an inch thick where it is thickest. 

169. Carried, however, to such a degree of subtlety as this, 
and with so ambitious and extravagant aim, bas-relief be- 
comes a tour-de-force ; and, you know, I have just told you 
all tours-de-force are wrong. ‘The true law of bas-relief is to 
begin with a depth of incision proportioned justly to the dis- 
tance of the observer and the character of the subject, and out 
of that rationally determined depth, neither increased for os- 
tentation of effect, nor diminished for ostentation of skill, to 
do the utmost that will be easily visible to an observer, sup- 
posing him to give an average human amount of attention, 
but not to peer into, or critically scrutinize the work. 

170. I cannot arrest you to day by the statement of any of 
the laws of sight and distance which determine the proper 
depth of bas-relief. Suppose that depth fixed ; then observe 
what a pretty problem, or, rather, continually varying cluster 
of problems, will be offered to us. You might, at first, imag- 
ine that, given what we may call our scale of solidity, or scale 
of depth, the diminution from nature would be in regular 


* The reference is te a-cast from a small and low relief of Florenting 
work in the Kensington Museum. 


386 ARATRA PHNTELICI. 


proportion, as for instance, if the real depth of your subject 
be, suppose a foot, and the depth of your bas-relief an inch, 
then the parts of the real subject which were six inches round 
the side of it would be carved, you might imagine, at. the 
depth of half-an-inch, and so the whole thing mechanically 
reduced to scale. But nota bit of it. Here is a Greek bas- 
relief of a chariot with two horses (upper figure, Plate XXII). 
Your whole subject has therefore the depth of two horses side 
by side, say six or eight feet. Your bas-relief has, on the 
scale,* say the depth of the third of an inch. Now, if you 
gave only the sixth of an inch for the depth of the off horse, 
and, dividing him again, only the twelfth of an inch for that 
of each foreleg, you would make him look a mile away from 
the other, and his own forelegs a mile apart. Actually, the 
Greek has made the near leg of the off horse project much be- 
yond the off leg of the near horse; and has put nearly the 
whole depth and power of his relief into the breast of the off 
horse, while for the whole distance from the head of the near- 
est to the neck of the other, he has allowed himself only a 
shallow line; knowing that, if he deepened that, he would 
give the nearest horse the look of having a thick nose ; where- 
as, by keeping that line down, he has not only made the head 
itself more delicate, but detached it from the other by giving 
no cast shadow, and left the shadow below to serve for thick- 
ness of breast, cutting it as sharp down as he possibly can, to 
make it bolder. 

171. Here is a fine piece of business we have got into! 
—even supposing that all this selection and adaptation were 
to be contrived under constant laws, and related only to the 
expression of given forms. But the Greek sculptor, all this 
while, is not only debating and deciding how to show what 
he wants, but, much more, debating and deciding what, as he 
can’t show everything, he will choose to show at all. Thus, 
being himself interested, and supposing that you will be, in 


* The actual bas-relief is on a coin, and the projection not above the 
twentieth of an inch, but I magnified it in photograph, for this Lecture, 
so as to represent a relief with about the third of an inch for maximum 
projection. 


STRUCTURE. 387 


the manner of the driving, he takes great pains to carve the 
reins, to show you where they are knotted, and how they are 
fastened round the driver’s waist (you recollect how Hippoly- 
tus was lost by doing that), but he does not care the least bit 
about the chariot, and having rather more geometry than he 
likes in the cross and circle of one wheel of it, entirely omits 
the other ! 

172, I think you must see by this time that the sculptor’s 
is not quite a trade which you can teach like brickmaking ; 
nor its produce an article of which you can supply any quan- 
tity “demanded ” for the next railroad waiting-room. It may 
perhaps, indeed, seem to you that, in the difficulties thus pre- 
sented by it, bas-relief involves more direct exertion of intel- 
lect than finished solid sculpture. Itis not so, however. The 
- questions involved by bas-relief are of a more curious and 
amusing kind, requiring great variety of expedients ; though 
none except such as a true workmanly instinct delights in in- 
venting and invents easily ; but design in solid sculpture in- 
volves considerations of weight in mass, of balance, of per- 
spective and opposition, in projecting forms, and of restraint 
for those which must not project, such as none but the great- 
est masters have ever completely solved ; and they, not always ; 
the difficulty of arranging the composition so as to be agree- 
able from points of view on all sides of it, being, itself, arduous 
enough. 

173. Thus far, I have been speaking only of the laws of 
structure relating to the projection of the mass which becomes 
itself the sculpture. Another most interesting group of con- 
structive laws governs its relation to the line that coutains or 
defines it. 

In your Standard Series I have placed a photograph of the 
south transept of Rouen Cathedral. Strictly speaking, all 
standards of Gothic are of the thirteenth century ; but, in the 
fourteenth, certain qualities of richness are obtained by the 
diminution of restraint ; out of which we must choose what is 
best in their kinds. The pedestals of the statues which once 
occupied the lateral recesses are, as you see, covered with 
eroups of figures, enclosed each in a quatrefoil panel; the 


388 ARATRA PENTELICTI. 


spaces between this panel and the enclosing square being 
filled with sculptures of animals. 

You cannot anywhere find a more lovely piece of fancy, or 
more illustrative of the quantity of.result that may be obtained 
with low and simple chiselling. The figures are all perfectly 
simple in drapery, the story told by lines of action only in the 
main group, no accessories being admitted. There is no un- 
dercutting anywhere, nor exhibition of technical skill, but 
the fondest and tenderest appliance of it ; and one of the prin- 
cipal charms of the whole is the adaptation of every subject 
to its quaint limit. The tale must be told within the four 
petals of the quatrefoil, and the wildest and playfullest beasts 
must never come out of their narrow corners. The attention 
with which spaces of this kind are filled by the Gothic design- 
ers is not merely a beautiful compliance with architectural re- 
quirements, but a definite assertion of their delight in the 
restraint of law; for, in illuminating books, although, if they 
chose it, they might have designed floral ornaments, as we 
now usually do, rambling loosely over the leaves, and although, 
in later works, such license is often taken by them, in all books 
of the fine time the wandering tendrils are enclosed by limits 
ipproximately rectilinear, and in gracefullest branching often 
detach themselves from the right line only by curvature of ex- 
treme severity. 

174. Since the darkness and extent of shadow by which 
the sculpture is relieved necessarily vary with the depth of the 
recess, there arise a series of problems, in deciding which the 
wholesome desire for emphasis by means of shadow is too often 
exaggerated by the ambition of the sculptor to show his skill 
in undercutting. The extreme of vulgarity is usually reached 
when the entire bas-relief is cut hollow underneath, as in 
much Indian and Chinese work, so as to relieve its forms 
against an absolute darkness ; but no formal law can ever be 
given ; for exactly the same thing may be beautifully done for 
a& wise purpose, by one person, which is basely done, and to 
no purpose, or toa bad one, by another. Thus, the desire for 
emphasis itself may be the craving of a deadened imagination, 
or the passion of a vigorous one; and relief against shadow 


STRUCTURE. 389 


may be sought by one man only for sensation, and by another 
for intelligibility. John of Pisa undercuts fiercely, in order 
to bring out the vigour of life which no level contour could 
render ; the Lombardi of Venice undercut delicately, in order 
to obtain beautiful lines, and edges of faultless precision ; but 
_ the base Indian craftsmen undercut only that people may 
wonder how the chiselling was done through the holes, or that 
they may see every monster white against black. 

175. Yet, here again we are met by another necessity for 
discrimination. There may be a true delight in the inlaying 
of white on dark, as there is a true delight in vigorous round- 
ing. Nevertheless, the general law is always, that, the lighter 
the incisions, and the broader the surface, the grander, ceeteris 
paribus, will be the work. Of the structural terms of that 
work you now know enough to understand that the schools of 
good sculpture, considered in relation to projection, divide 
themselves into four entirely distinct groups :— 

Ist. Flat Relief, in which the surface is, in many places, 
absolutely flat ; and the expression depends greatly 
on the lines of its outer contour, and on fine incis- 
ions within them. 

2nd. Round Relief, in which, as in the best coins, the sculpt- 
ured mass projects so as to be capable of complete 
modulation into form, but is not anywhere undercut. 
The formation of a coin by the blow of a die neces- 
sitates, of course, the severest obedience to this law. 

3rd. Edged Relief. Undercutting admitted, so as to throw 
out the forms against a background of shadow. 

4th. Full Relief. The statue completely solid in form, and 
unreduced in retreating depth of it, yet connected 
locally with some definite part of the building, so as 
to be still dependent on the shadow of its back- 
ground and direction of protective line. 

176. Let me recommend you at once to take what pains 
may be needful to enable you to distinguish these four kinds 
of sculpture, for the distinctions between them are not founded 
on mere differences in gradation of depth. They are truly 
four species, or orders, of sculpture, separated from each other 


390 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


by determined characters. I have used, you may have noted, 
hitherto in my Lectures, the word “bas-relief” almost indis- 
criminately for all, because the degree of lowness or highness 
of relief is not the question, but the methed of relief. Observe 
again, therefore— 

A. Ifa portion of the surface is absolutely flat, you have the 
: first order—Flat Relief. 

B. If every portion of the surface is rounded, but none un- 
dercut, you have Round Relief—essentially that of seals and 
coins. 

C. If any part of the edges be undercut, but the general 
projection of solid form reduced, you have what I think you 
may conveniently call Foliate Relief,—the parts of the design 
overlapping each other in places, like edges of leayes. 

D. If the undercutting is bold and deep, and the projection 
of solid form unreduced, you have full relief. 

Learn these four names at once by heart :— 

Flat Relief. 

Round Relief. 

Foliate Relief. 

Full Relief. 

And whenever you look at any piece of sculpture, determine 
first to which of these classes it belongs ; and then consider 
how the sculptor has treated it with reference to the neces- 
sary structure—that reference, remember, being partly to the 
mechanical conditions of the material, partly to the means of 
light and shade at his command. 

177. To take a single instance. You know, for these many 
years, I have been telling our architects with all the force of 
voice I had in me, that they could design nothing until they 
could carve natural forms rightly. Many imagine that work 
was easy ; but judge for yourselves whether it be or not. In 
Plate XII, I have drawn, with approximate accuracy, a cluster 
of Phillyrea leaves as they grow. Now, if we wanted to cut 
them in bas-relief, the first thing we should have to consider 
would be the position of their outline on the marble ;—here 
it is, as far down as the spring of the leaves. But do you 
suppose that is what an ordinary sculptor could either lay for 


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STRUCTURE. ' 391 


his first sketch, or contemplate as a limit to be worked down 
to? Then consider how the interlacing and springing of the 
leaves can be expressed within this outline. It must be done 
by leaving such projection in the marble as will take the hght 
in the same proportion as the drawing does ;—and a Floren- 
tine workman could do it, for close sight, without driving one 
incision deeper, or raising a single surface higher, than the 
eighth of an inch. Indeed, no sculptor of the finest time 


Ee 


Fra. 9. 


would design such a complex cluster of leaves as this, except 
for bronze or iron work; they would take simpler contours 
for marble; but the laws of treatment would, under these 
conditions, remain just as strict : and you may, perhaps, be- 
lieve me now when I tell you that, in any piece of fine struct- 
ural sculpture by the great masters, there is more subtlety 
and noble obedience to lovely laws than could be explained to 
you if I took twenty lectures to do it in, instead of one. 

178. There remains yet a point of mechanical treatment, on 
which I have not yet touched at all ; nor that the least impor- 


392 re ARATRA PHNTELICI. 


tant,—namely, the actual method and style of handling. A 
great sculptor uses his tools exactly asa painter his pencil, 
and you may recognize the decision of his thought, and glow 
of his temper, no less in the workmanship than the design. 
The modern system of modelling the work in clay, getting it 
into form by machinery, and by the hands of subordinates, 
and touching it at last, if indeed the (so called) sculptor touch 
it at all, only to correct their inefficiencies, renders the pro- 
duction of good work in marble a physical impossibility. The 
first result of it is that the sculptor thinks in clay instead of 
marble, and loses his instinctive sense of the proper treatment 
of a brittle substance. The second is that neither he nor the 
public recognize the touch of the chisel as expressive of per- 
sonal feeling or power, and that nothing is looked for except 
mechanical polish. 

179. The perfectly simple piece of Greek relief represented 
in Plate XII, will enable you to understand at once,—exam- 
ination of the original, at your leisure, will prevent you, I 
trust, from ever forgetting—what is meant by the virtue of 
handling in sculpture. 

The projection of the heads of the four horses, one behind 
the other, is certainly not more, altogether, than three-quarters 
of an inch from the flat ground, and the one in front does not 
in reality project more than the one behind it, yet, by mere 
drawing,* you see the sculptor has got them to appear to re- 
cede in due order, and by the soft rounding of the flesh sur- 
faces, and modulation of the veins, he has taken away all look 
of flatness from the necks. He has drawn the eyes and nos- 
trils with dark incision, careful as the finest touches of a 
painter’s pencil: and then, at last, when he comes to the manes, 
he has let fly hand and chisel with their full force, and where 
a base workman, (above all, if he had modelled the thing in 
clay first,) would have lost himself in laborious imitation of 
hair, the Greek has struck the tresses out with angular inci- 


* This plate has been executed from a drawing by Mr. Burgess, in 
which he has followed the curves of incision with exquisite care, and 
preserved the effect of the surface of the stone, where a photograph 
would have lost it by exaggerating accidental stains. 


‘NOISIONT CHOAY AT AUALAINOG GNV AMIIAY LVI WAANO— ‘TTX WovIg 





of the 


University of THHnois, 





STRUCTURE. 593 


sions, deep driven, every one in appointed place and deliberate 
curve, yet flowing so free under his noble hand that you can- 
not alter, without harm, the bending of any single ridge, nor 
contract, nor extend, a point of them. And if you will look 
back to Plate IX. you will see the difference between this sharp 
incision, used to express horse-hair, and the soft incision with 
intervening rounded ridge, used to express the hair of Apollo 
Chrysocomes ; and, beneath, the obliquely ridged incision used 
to express the plumes of his swan; in both these cases the 
handling being much more slow, because the engraving is in 
metal; but the structural importance of incision, as the means 
of effect, never lost sight of. Finally, here are two actual ex- 
amples of the work in marble of the two great schools of the 
world ; one, a little Fortune, standing tiptoe on the globe of 
the Earth, its surface traced with lines in hexagons ; not cha- 
otic under Fortune’s feet ; Greek, this, and by a trained work- 
man ;—dug up in the temple of Neptune at Corfu ;—and here, 
a Florentine portrait-marble, found in the recent alterations, 
face downwards, under the pavement of St? Maria Novella ;* 
both of them first-rate of their kind ; and both of them, while 
exquisitely finished at the telling points, showing, on all their 
unregarded surfaces, the rough furrow of the fast-driven 
chisel, as distinctly as the edge of a common paving-stone. 
180. Let me suggest to you, in conclusion, one most inter- 
esting point of mental expression in these necessary aspects 
of finely executed sculpture. I have already again and again 
pressed on your attention the beginning of the arts of men in 
the make and use of the ploughshare. ead more carefully 
—you might indeed do well to learn at once by heart,—the 
twenty-seven lines of the Fourth Pythian, which describe the 
ploughing of Jason. There is nothing grander extant in 
human fancy, nor set down in human words: but this great 
mythical expression of the conquest of the earth-clay, and 
brute-force, by vital human energy, will become yet more 
interesting to you when you reflect what enchantment has 
been cut, on whiter clay, by the tracing of finer furrows ;— 


“These two marbles will always, henceforward, be sufficiently ac- 
cessible for reference in my room at Corpus Christi College. 


394 ARATRA PENTEHLICI. 


what the delicate and consummate arts of man have done’ by 
the ploughing of marble, and granite, and iron. You will 
learn daily more and more, as you advance in actual practice, 
how the primary manual art of engraving, in the steadiness, 
clearness, and irrevocableness of it, is the best art-discipline 
that can be given either to mind or hand;* you will recog- 
nize one law of right, pronouncing itself in the well-resolved 
work of every age ; you will see the firmly traced and irrey- 
ocable incision determining not only the forms, but, in great 
part, the moral temper, of all vitally progressive art ; you will 
trace the same principle and power in the furrows which the 
oblique sun shows on the granite of his own Egyptian city,— 
in the white scratch of the stylus through the colour on a 
Greek vase—in the first delineation, on the wet wall, of the 
eroups of an Italian fresco ; in the unerring and unalterable 
touch of the great engraver of Nuremberg,—and in the deep 
driven and deep bitten ravines of metal by which Turner 
closed, in embossed limits, the shadows of the Liber Studi- 
orum. 

Learn, therefore, in its full extent, the force of the great 
Greek word, xapacow ;—and, give me pardon—if you think 
pardon needed, that I ask you also to learn the full meaning 
of the English word derived from it. Here, at the Ford of 
the Oxen of Jason, are other furrows to be driven than these 
in the marble of Pentelicus. The fruitfullest, or the fatallest 
of all ploughing is that by the thoughts of your youth, on the 
white field of its imagination. Jor by these, either down to 
the disturbed spirit, “Kéxorrat Kai yapacoerac médov;” or 
around the quiet spirit, and on all the laws of conduct that 
hold it, as a fair vase its frankincense, are ordained the pure 
colours, and engraved the just Characters, of Afonian life. 





* That it was also, in some cases, the earliest that the Greeks gave, 
is proved by Lucians account of his first lesson at his uncle’s; the 
éyxomevs, literally ‘‘in-cutter ’—being the first tool put into his hand, 
and an earthenware tablet to cut upon, which the boy pressing too hard, 
presently breaks ;—gets beaten—goes home crying, and becomes, after 
his dream above quoted, a philosopher instead of a sculptor. 


or | 


THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 35 


LECTURE VIL 
THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 


December, 1870. 


181. Ir can scarcely be needful for me to tell even the younger 
members of my present audience, that the conditions neces- 
sary for the production of a perfect school of sculpture have 
only twice been met in the history of the world, and then for 
a short time ; nor for short time only, but also in narrow dis- 
tricts, namely, in the valleys and islands of Ionian Greece, and 
in the strip of land deposited by the Arno, between the Apen- 
nine crests and the sea. 

All other schools, except these two, led severally by Athens 
in the fifth century before Christ, and by Florence in the 
fifteenth of our own era, are imperfect ; and the best of them 
are derivative : these two are consummate in themselves, and 
the origin of what is best in others. 

182. And observe, these Athenian and Florentine schools 
are both of equal rank, as essentially original and independ- 
ent. The Florentine, being subsequent to the Greek, bor- 
rowed much from it ; but it would have existed just as strongly 
—and, perhaps, in some respects, more nobly—had it been 
the first, instead of the latter of the two. The task set to each 
of these mightiest of the nations was, indeed, practically the 
same, and as hard to the one as to the other. The Greeks 
found Phoenician and Etruscan art monstrous, and had to 
make them human. The Italians found Byzantine and Nor- 
man art monstrous, and had to make them human. The 
original power in the one case is easily traced ; in the other 
it has partly to be unmasked, because the change at Florence 
was, in many points, suggested and stimulated by the former 
school. But we mistake in supposing that Athens taught 
Florence the laws of design ; she taught her, in reality, only 
the duty of truth. 

183. You remember that I told you the highest art could 


396 ARATRA PENTELICL, 


do no more than rightly represent the human form. This is 
the simple test, then, of a perfect school,—that it has repre- 
sented the human form, so that it is impossible to conceive of 
its being better done. And that, I repeat, has been accom- 
plished twice only: once in Athens, once in Florence. And 
so narrow is the excellence even of these two exclusive schools, 
that it cannot be said of either of them that they represented 
the entire human form. The Greeks perfectly drew, and per- 
fectly moulded the body and limbs ; but there is, so far as I 
am aware, no instance of their representing the face as well 
as any great Italian. On the other hand, the Italian painted 
and carved the face insuperably ; but I believe there is no in- 
stance of his having perfectly represented the body, which, 
by command of his religion, it became his pride to despise, 
and his safety to mortify. 

184. The general course of your study here renders it de- 
sirable that you should be accurately acquainted with the lead- 
ing principles of Greek sculpture ; but I cannot lay these be- 
fore you without giving undue prominence to some of the 
special merits of .that school, unless I previously indicate the 
relation it holds to the more advanced, though less disciplined, 
excellence of Christian art. 

In this and the last lecture of the present course,* I shall 
endeavour, therefore, to mass for you, in such rude and dia- 
eram-like outline as may be possible or intelligible, the main 
characteristics of the two schools, completing and correcting 
the details of comparison afterwards ; and not answering, ob- 
serve, at present, for any generalization I give you, except as a 
eround for subsequent closer and more qualified statements. 

And in carrying out this parallel, I shall speak indifferently 
of works of sculpture, and of the modes of painting which 


* The closing Lecture, on the religious temper of the Florentine, 
though necessary for the complete explanation of the subject to my 
class, at the time, introduced new points of inquiry which I do not 
choose to lay before the general reader until they can be examined in 
fuller sequence. The present volume, therefore, closes with the Sixth 
Lecture, and that on Christian art will be given as the first of the pub- 
lished course on Florentine Sculpture. 


THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 397 


propose to themselves the same objects as sculpture. And 
this indeed Florentine, as opposed to Venetian, painting, and 
that of Athens in the fifth century, nearly always did. 

185. I begin, therefore, by comparing two designs of the 
simplest kind—engravings, or, at least, linear drawings, both ; 
one on clay, one on copper, made in the central periods of 
each style, and representing the same goddess—Aphrodite. 
They are now set beside each other in your Rudimentary 
Series. The first is from a patera lately found at Camirus, 
authoritatively assigned by Mr. Newton, in his recent catalogue, 
to the best period of Greek art. The second is from one of 
the series of engravings executed, probably, by Baccio Baldini, 
in 1485, out of which I chose your first practical exercise—the 
Sceptre of Apollo. I cannot, however, make the comparison 
accurate in all respects, for I am obliged to set the restricted 
type of the Aphrodite Urania of the Greeks beside the univer- 
sal Deity conceived by the Italian as governing the air, earth, 
and sea ; nevertheless the restriction in the mind of the Greek, 
and expatiation in that of the Florentine, are both character- 
istic. The Greek Venus Urania is flying in heaven, her power 
over the waters symbolized by her being borne by aswan, and 
her power over the earth by a single flower in her right hand ; 
but the Italian Aphrodite is rising out of the actual sea, and 
only half risen: her limbs are still in the sea, her merely ani- 
mal strength filling the waters with their life; but her body 
to the loins is in the sunshine, her face raised to the sky ; her 
hand is about to lay a garland of flowers on the earth. 

186. The Venus Urania of the Greeks, in her relation to 
men, has power only over lawful and domestic love; there- 
fore, she is fully dressed, and not only quite dressed, but most 
daintily and trimly: her feet delicately sandalled, her gown 
spotted with little stars, her hair brushed exquisitely smooth 
at the top of her head, trickling in minute waves down her 
forehead ; and though, because there’s such a quantity of it, 
she can’t possibly help having a chignon, look how tightly she 
has fastened it in with her broad fillet. Of course she is 
married, so she must wear a cap with pretty minute pendant 
jewels at the border ; and a very small necklace, all that her 


398 ARATRA PENTELICT. 


husband can properly afford, just enough to go closely round 
the neck, and no more. On the contrary, the Aphrodite of 
the Italian, being universal love, is pure-naked ; and her long 
hair is thrown wild to the wind and sea. 

These primal differences in the symbolism, observe, are 
only because the artists are thinking of separate powers: 
they do not necessarily involve any national distinction in 
feeling. But the differences I have next to indicate are es- 
sential, and characterize the two opposed national modes of 
mind. 

187. First, and chiefly. The Greek Aphrodite is a very 
pretty person, and the Italian a decidedly plain one. That is 
because a Greek thought no one could possibly love any but 
pretty people ; but an Italian thought that love could give 
dignity to the meanest form that it inhabited, and light to the 
poorest that it looked upon. So his Aphrodite will not con- 
descend to be pretty. 

188. Secondly. In the Greek Venus the breasts are broad 
and full, though perfectly severe in their almost conical pro- 
file ;—(you are allowed on purpose to see the outline of the 
right breast, under the chiton :)—also the right arm is left bare, 
and you can just see the contour of the front of the right 
Jimb and knee ; both arm and limb pure and firm, but lovely. 
The plant she holds in her hand is a branching and flowering 
one, the seed vessel prominent. These signs all mean that 
her essential function is child-bearing. 

On the contrary, in the Italian Venus the breasts are so 
small as to be scarcely traceable ; the body strong, and almost 
masculine in its angles; the arms meagre and unattractive, 
and she lays a decorative garland of flowers on the earth. 
These signs mean that the Italian thought of love as the 
streneth of an eternal spirit, for ever helpful; and for ever 
crowned with flowers, that neither know seed-time nor har- 
vest, and bloom where there is neither death, nor birth. 

189. Thirdly. The Greek Aphrodite is entirely calm, and 
looks straight forward. Not one feature of her face is dis- 
turbed, or seems ever to have been subject to emotion. The 
Italian Aphrodite looks up, her face all quivering and burning 


THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 399 


with passion and wasting anxiety. The Greek one is quiet, 
self-possessed, and self-satisfied ; the Italian incapable of rest ; 
she has had no thought nor care for herself; her hair has 
been bound by a fillet hike the Greeks ; but it is now all fallen 
loose, and clotted with the sea, or clinging to her body ; only 
the front tress of it is caught by the breeze from her raised 
forehead, and lifted, in the place where the tongues of fire 
rest on the brows, in the early Christian pictures of Pentecost, 
and the waving fires abide upon the heads of Angelico’s ser- 
aphim. 

190. There are almost endless points of interest, great and 
small, to be noted in these differences of treatment. This 
binding of the hair by the single fillet marks the straight 
course of one great system of art method, from that Greek 
head which I showed you on the archaic coin of the seventh 
century before Christ, to this of the fifteenth of our own era 
—nay, when you look close, you will see the entire action of 
the head depends on one lock of hair falling back from the 
ear, which it does in compliance with the old Greek observance 
of its being bent there by the pressure of the helmet. That 
rippling of it down her shoulders comes from the Athena of 
of Corinth ; the raising of it on her forehead, from the knot 
of the hair of Diana, changed into the vestal fire of the angels. 
But chiefly, the calmness of the features in the one face, and 
their anxiety in the other, indicate first, indeed, the character- 
istic difference in every conception of the schools, the Greek 
never representing expression, the Italian primarily seeking 
it ; but far more, mark for us here the utter change in the 
conception of love; from the tranquil guide and queen of a 
happy terrestrial domestic life, accepting its immediate 
pleasures and natural duties, to the agonizing hope of an in- 
finite good, and the ever mingled joy and terror of a love di- 
vine in jealousy, crying, ‘‘Set me as a seal upon thine heart, 
as a seal upon thine arm ; for love is strong as death, jealousy 
is cruel as the grave.” 

The vast issues dependent on this change in the conception 
of the ruling passion of the human soul, I will endeavour to 
show you, on a future occasion: in my present lecture, I 


400 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


shall limit myself to the definition of the temper of Greek 
sculpture, and of its distinctions from Florentine in the treat- 
ment of any subject whatever, be it love or hatred, hope or 
despair. 

These great differences are mainly the following. 

191. 1. A Greck never expresses momentary passion; a 
Florentine looks to momentary passion as the ultimate object 
of his skill. 

When you are next in London, look carefully in the British 
Museum at the casts from the statues in the pediment of the 
Temple of Minerva at Aigina. You have there Greek work of 
definite date ;—about 600 B.c., certainly before 580—of the 
purest kind; and you have the representation of a noble ideal 
subject, the combats of the Aiacidee at Troy, with Athena her- 
self looking on. But there is no attempt whatever to repre- 
sent expression in the features, none to give complexity of 
action or gesture; there is no struggling, no anxiety, no Visi- 
ble temporary exertion of muscles. There are fallen figures, 
one pulling a lance out of his wound, and others in attitudes 
of attack and defence ; several kneeling to draw their bows. 
But all inflict and suffer, conquer or expire, with the same 
smile. 

192. Plate XIV. gives you examples, from more advanced 
art, of true Greek representation ; the subjects being the two 
contests of leading import to the Greek heart—that of Apollo 
with the Python, and of Hercules with the Nemean Lion. You 
see that in neither case is there the slightest effort to repre- 
sent the Avoca, or agony of contest. No good Greek artist 
would have you behold the suffering, either of gods, heroes, 
or men ; nor allow you to be apprehensive of the issue of their 
contest with evil beasts, or evil spirits. All such lower 
sources of excitement are to be closed to you; your interest 
is to be in the thoughts involved by the fact of the war; and 
in the beauty vr rightness of form, whether active or in- 
active. I have to work out this subject with you afterwards, 
and to compare with the pure Greek method of thought, that 
of modern dramatic passion, engrafted on it, as typically in 
Turner’s contest of Apollo and the Python : in the meantime, 


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PLATE XV.—HERA OF ARGOS, ZEUS OF SYRACUSE. 


THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 401 


be content with the statement of this first great principle— 
that a Greek, as such, never expresses momentary passion. 
193. Secondly. The Greek, as such, never expresses per- 
sonal character, while a Florentine holds it to be the ultimate 
condition of beauty. You are startled, I suppose, at my 
saying this, having had it often pointed out to you, as a tran 
scendent piece of subtlety in Greek art, that you could dis: 
tinguish Hercules from Apollo by his being stout, and Diana 
from Juno by her being slender. That is very true ; but those 
are general distinctions of class, not special distinctions of 
personal character. Liven as general, they are bodily, not 
mental. They are the distinctions, in fleshly aspect, between 
an athlete and a musician,—between a matron and a huntress ; 
but in no wise distinguish the simple-hearted hero from the 
subtle Master of the Muses, nor the wilful and fitful girl- 
goddess from the cruel and resolute matron-goddess. But 
judge for yourselves ;—In the successive plates, XV.—XVIIL., I 
show you,* typically represented as the protectresses of nations, 
the Argive, Cretan, and Lacinian Hera, the Messenian Demeter, 
the Athena of Corinth, the Artemis of Syracuse, the fountain 
Arethusa of Syracuse, and the Sirem Ligeia of Terina. Now, 
of these heads, it is true that some are more delicate in feature 
than the rest, and some softer in expression : in other respects, 
can you trace any distinction between the Goddesses of Earth 
and Heaven, or between the Goddess of Wisdom and the Water 
Nymph of Syracuse? So little can you do so, that it would have 
remained a disputed question—had not the name luckily been 
inscribed on some Syracusan coins—whether the head upon 
them was meant for Arethusa at all ; and, continually, it becomes 
a question respecting finished statues, if without attributes, “Is 
this Bacchus or Apollo—Zeus or Poseidon?” Theve is a fact for 
you ; noteworthy, I think! There is no personal character in 


* These plates of coins are given for future reference and examina- 
tion, not merely for the use made of them in this place. The Lacinian 
Hera, if a coin could be found unworn in surface, would be very noble ; 
her hair is thrown free because she is the goddess of the cape of storms, 
though in her temple, there, the wind never moved the ashes om its 
altar. (Livy, xxiv. 3.) 


402 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


true Greek art :—abstract ideas of youth and age, strength 
and swiftness, virtue and vice,—yes: but there is no individu- 
ality ; and the negative holds down to the revived conven- 
tionalism of the Greek school by Leonardo, when he tells you 
how you are to paint young women, and how old ones ; though 
a Greek would hardly have been so discourteous to age as the 
Italian is in his canon of it,—‘‘ old women should be repre- 
sented as passionate and hasty, after the manner of Infernal 
Furies.” 

194, ‘But at least, if the Greeks do not give character, they 
give ideal beauty?” So itissaid, without contradiction. But 
will you look again at the series of coins of the best time of 
Greek art, which I have just set before you? Are any of these 
goddesses or nymphs very beautiful? Certainly the Junos 
are not. Certainly the Demeters are not. The Siren, and 
Arethusa, have well-formed and regular features; but I am 
quite sure that if you look at them without prejudice, you will 
think neither reach even the average standard of pretty Eng- 
lish girls. The Venus Urania suggests at first, the idea of a 
very charming person, but you will find there is no real depth 
nor sweetness in the contours, looked at closely. And re- 
member, these are chosen examples; the best I can find of 
art current in Greece at the great time ; and if even I were to 
take the celebrated statues, of which only two or three are 
extant, not one of them excels the Venus of Melos; and she, 
as I have already asserted, in The Queen of the Air, has noth- 
ing notable in feature except dignity and simplicity. Of Athena 
I do not know one authentic type of great beauty ; but the 
intense ugliness which the Greeks could tolerate in their sym- 
bolism of her will be convincingly proved to you by the coin 
represented in Plate VI. You need only look at two or three 
vases of the best time, to assure yourselves that beauty of 
feature was, in popular art, not only unattained, but unat- 
tempted ; and finally,—and this you may accept as a conclusive 
proof of the Greek insensitiveness to the most subtle beauty— 
there is little evidence even in their literature, and none in 
their art, of their having ever perceived any beauty in infancy, 
or early childhood. 





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PLATE XVII.—ATHENA OF THURIUM. 


SEREIE LIGEIA OF TERINA 





THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 403 


195. The Greeks, then, do not give passion, do not give 
character, do not give refined or naive beauty. But you may 
think that the absence of these is intended to give dignity to 
the gods and nymphs; and that their calm faces would be 
found, if you long observed them, instinct with some expres- 
sion of divine mystery or power. 

I will convince you of the narrow range of Greek thought 
in these respects, by showing you, from the two sides of one 
and the same coin, images of the most mysterious of their 
Deities, and the most powerful,—Demeter and Zeus. 

Remember, that just as the west coasts of Ireland and Eng- 
land eatch first on their hills the rain of the Atlantic, so the 
western Peloponnese arrests, in the clouds of the first moun- 
tain ranges of Arcadia, the moisture of the Mediterranean ; 
and over all the plains of Klis, Pylos, and Messene, the strength 
and sustenance of men was naturally felt to be granted by 
Zeus ; as, on the east coast of Greece, the greater clearness of 
the air by the power of Athena. If you will recollect the 
prayer of Rhea, in the single line of Callimachus—“ Tata ivy, 
Téexe Kal ov: Teal O WOdtVes eAadpal,” (compare Pausanias iv. 33, 
at the beginning, )—it will mark for you the connection, in the 
Greek mind, of the birth of the mountain springs of Arcadia 
with the birth of Zeus. And the centres of Greek thought on 
this western coast are necessarily Elis, and, (after the time of 
Eipaminondas, ) Messene. 

196. I show you the coin of Messene, because the splendid 
height and form of Mount Ithome were more expressive of 
the physical power of Zeus than the lower hills of Olympia ; 
and also because it was struck just at the time of the most 
finished and delicate Greek art—a little after the main 
strength of Phidias, but before decadence had generally pro- 
nounced itself. The coin is a silver didrachm, bearing on 
one side a head of Demeter (Plate XVI, at the top); on the 
other a full figure of Zeus Aietophoros (Plate XIX., at the 
top); the two together signifying the sustaining streneth of 
the earth and heaven. Look first at the head of Demeter. It 
is merely meant to personify fulness of harvest; there is no 
mystery in it, no sadness, no vestige of the expression which 


404 ARATRA PENTELICTI, 


we should have looked for in any effort to realize the Greek 
thoughts of the Harth Mother, as we find them spoken by the 
poets. But take it merely as personified abundance ;—the 
goddess of black furrow and tawny grass—how commonplace 
it is, and how poor! The hair is grand, and there is one 
stalk of wheat set in it, which is enough to indicate the god- 
dess who is meant ; but, in that very office, ignoble, for it shows 
that the artist could only inform you that this was Demeter 
by such a symbol. How easy it would have been for a great 
designer to have made the hair lovely with fruitful flowers, 
and the features noble in mystery of gloom, or of tenderness. 
But here you have nothing to interest you, except the com- 
mon Greek perfections of a straight nose and a full chin. 

197. We pass, on the reverse of the die, to the figure of 
Zeus Aietophoros. Think of the invocation to Zeus in the 
Suppliants, (525), “King of Kings, and Happiest of the 
Happy, Perfectest of the Perfect in strength, abounding in 
all things, Jove—hear us and be with us ;” and then, consider 
what strange phase of mind it was, which, under the very 
mountain-home of the god, was content with this symbol of 
him as a well-fed athlete, holding a diminutive and crouching 
eagle on his fist. The features and the right hand have been 
injured in this coin, but the action of the arms shows that it 
held a thunderbolt, of which, I believe, the twisted rays were 
triple. In the, presumably earlier, coin engraved by Mil- 
lingen, however,* it is singly pointed only; and the added 
inscription “I@QM,” in the field, renders the conjecture of 
Millingen probable, that this is a rude representation of the 
statue of Zeus Ithomates, made by Ageladas, the master of 
Phidias ; and I think it has, indeed, the aspect of the endeav- 
our, by a workman of more advanced knowledge, and more 
vulgar temper, to put the softer anatomy of later schools 
into the simple action of an archaic figure. Be that as it 
may, here is one of the most refined cities of Greece content 
with the figure of an athlete as the representative of their 
own mountain god ; marked as a divine power merely by the 
attributes of the eagle and thunderbolt. 

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THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 405 


198. Lastiy. The Greeks have not, it appears, in any 
supreme way, given to their statues character, beauty, or 
divine strength. Can they give divine sadness? Shall we 
find in their artwork any of that pensiveness and yearning 
for the dead, which fills the chants of their tragedy? I sup- 
pose if anything like nearness or firmness of faith in after- 
life is to be found in Greek legend, you might look for it in 
the stories about the Island of Leuce, at the mouth of the 
Danube, inhabited by the ghosts of Achilles, Patroclus, Ajax 
the son of Oileus, and Helen ; and in which the pavement of 
the Temple of Achilles was washed daily by the sea-birds 
with their wings, dipping them in the sea. 

Now it happens that we have actually on a coin of the 
Locrians the representation of the ghost of the Lesser Ajax. 
There is nothing in the history of human imagination more 
lovely, than their leaving always a place for his spirit, vacant 
in their ranks of battle. But here is their sculptural repre- 
sentation of the phantom ; (lower figure, Plate XIX.), and I 
think you will at once agree with me in feeling that it would be 
impossible to conceive anything more completely unspiritual. 
You might more than doubt that it could have been meant for 
the departed soul, unless you were aware of the meaning of 
this little circlet between the feet. On other coins you find his 
name inscribed there, but in this you have his habitation, 
the haunted Island of Leuce itself, with the waves flowing 
round it. 

199. Again and again, however, I have to remind you, 
with respect to these apparently frank and simple failures, 
that the Greek always intends you to think for yourself, and 
understand, more than he can speak. Take this instance at 
our hands, the trim little circlet for the Island of Leuce. 
The workman knows very well it is not like the island, and 
that he could not make it so; that at its best, his sculpture 
can be little more than a letter ; and yet, in putting this cir- 
clet, and its encompassing fretwork of minute waves, he does 
more than if he had merely given you a letter L, or written 
*Leuce.” If you know anything of beaches and sea, this 
symbol will set your imagination at work in recalling them ; 


406 ARATRA PENTELICI 


then you will think of the temple service of the novitiate sea 
birds, and of the ghosts of Achilles and Patroclus appearing, 
like the Dioscuri, above the storm-clouds of the Euxine. And 
the artist, throughout his work, never for an instant loses 
faith in your sympathy and passion being ready to answer his ; 
—if you have none to give, he does not care to take you into 
his counsel ; on the whole, would rather that you should not 
look at his work. 

200. But if you have this sympathy to give, you may be 
sure that whatever he does for you will be right, as far as he 
can render it so. It may not besublime, nor beautiful, nor 
amusing ; but it will be full of meaning, and faithful in guid- 
ance. He will give you clue to myriads of things that he can- 
not literally teach ; and, so far as he does teach, you may trust 
him. Is not this saying much? 

And as he strove only to teach what was true, so, in his 
sculptured symbol, he strove only to carve what was—Right. 
He rules over the arts to this day, and will for ever, because 
he sought not first for beauty, nor first for passion, or for inven- 
tion, but for Rightness; striving to display, neither himself 
nor his art, but the thing that he dealt with, in its simplicity. 
That is his specific character as a Greek. Of course, every 
nation’s character is connected with that of others surround- 
ing or preceding it ; and in the best Greek work you will find 
some things that are still false, or fanciful ; but whatever in it 
is false or fanciful, is not the Greek part of it—it is the 
Phoenician, or Egyptian, or Pelasgian part. The essential Hel- 
lenic stamp is veracity :—LHEastern nations drew their heroes 
with eight legs, but the Greeks drew them with two ;—Eegyp- 
tians drew their deities with cats’ heads, but the Greeks drew 
them with men’s; and out of all fallacy, disproportion, and 
indefiniteness, they were, day by day, resolvedly withdraw- 
ing and exalting themselves into restricted and demonstrable 
truth. 

201. And now, having cut away the misconceptions which 
encumbered our thoughts, I shall be able to put the Greek 
school into some clearness of its position for you, with respect 
to the art of the world. That relation is strangely duplicate ; 





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THH SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 407 


for on one side, Greek art is the root of all simplicity ; and on 
the other, of all complexity. 

On one side I say, it is the root of all simplicity. If you 
were for some prolonged period to study Greek sculpture ex- 
clusively in the Elgin Room of the British Museum, and were 
then suddenly transported to the Hotel de Cluny, or any 
other museum of Gothic and barbarian workmanship, you 
would imagine the Greeks were the masters of all that was 
grand, simple, wise, and tenderly human, opposed to the pet- 
tiness of the toys of the rest of mankind. 

202. On one side of their work they are so. From all vain 
and mean decoration—all weak and monstrous error, the 
Greeks rescue the forms of man and beast, and. sculpture 
them in the nakedness of their true flesh, and with the fire 
of their living soul. Distinctively from other races, as I have 
now, perhaps to your weariness, told you, this is the work of 
the Greek, to give health to what was diseased, and chastise- 
ment to what was untrue. So faras this is found in any other 
school, hereafter, it belongs to them by inheritance from the 
Greeks, or invests them with the brotherhood of the Greek. 
And this is the deep meaning of the myth of Deedalus as the 
giver of motion to statues, The literal change from the bind- 
ing together of the feet to their separation, and the other 
modifications of action which took place, either in progressive 
skill, or often, as the mere consequence of the transition from 
wood to stone, (a figure carved out of one wooden log must 
have necessarily its feet near each other, and hands at its 
sides), these literal changes are as nothing, in the Greek fable, 
compared to the bestowing of apparent life. The figures of 
monstrous gods on Indian temples have their legs separate 
enough ; but they are infinitely more dead than the rude fic- 
ures at Branchidz sitting with their hands on their knees. 
And, briefly, the work of Deedalus is the giving of deceptive 
life, as that of Prometheus the giving of real life; and I can 
put the relation of Greek to all other art, in this function, be- 
fore you in easily compared and remembered examples. 

203. Here, on the right, in Plate XX., is an Indian bull, 
colossal, and elaborately carved, which you may take as a 


408 ARATRA PENTELICI. 


sufficient type of the bad art of all the earth. False in form, 
dead in heart, and loaded with wealth, externally. We will 
not ask the date of this ; it may rest in the eternal obscurity 
of evil art, everywhere, and forever. Now, besides this colos- 
sal bull, here is a bit of Deedalus work, enlarged from a coin 
not bigger than a shilling : look at the two together, and you 
ought to know, henceforward, what Greek art means, to the 
end of your days. 

204. In this aspect of it then, I say, it is the simplest and 
nakedest of lovely veracities. But it has another aspect, or 
rather another pole, for the opposition is diametric. As the 
simplest, so also itis the most complex of human art. I told 
you in my fifth Lecture, showing you the spotty picture of 
Velasquez, that an essential Greek character is a liking for 
things that are dappled. And you cannot but have noticed 
how often and how prevalently the idea which gave its name 
to the Porch of Polygnotus, “orod mwotxirn,’ occurs to the 
Greeks as connected with the finest art. Thus, when the lux- 
urious city is opposed to the simple and healthful one, in the 
second book of Plato’s Polity, you find that, next to perfumes, 
pretty ladies, and dice, you must have in it “ wouxAla,” which 
observe, both in that place and again in the third book, is the 
separate art of joiners’ work, or inlaying ; but the idea of ex- 
quisitely divided variegation or division, both in sight and 
sound—the ‘ravishing division to the lute,” as in Pindavr’s 
“ rouxiAou vuvor’’—runs through the compass of all Greek art- 
description ; and if, instead of studying that art among marbles, 
you were to look at it only on vases of a fine time, (look back, 
for instance, to Plate IV. here), your impression of it would 
be, instead of breadth and simplicity, one of universal spot- 
tiness and chequeredness, “ év dyyéwy "Epxeow apouxidots ;” 
and of the artist’s delighting in nothing so much as in crossed 
or starred or spotted things; which, in right places, he and 
his public both do unlimitedly. Indeed they hold it compli- 
mentary even to a trout, to call him a “spotty.” Do you 
recollect the trout in the tributaries of the Ladon, which 
Pausanias says were spotted, so that they were like thrushes, 
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PLATE XXI.—THE BEGINNINGS OF CHIVALRY, 


THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 409 


mouxtdia, however, they disappointed him. ‘TI, indeed, saw 
some of them caught,” he says, ‘‘but I did not hear any of 
them speak, though I waited beside the river till sunset.” 

205. I must sum roughly now, for I have detained you too 
long. 

The Greeks have been thus the origin not only of all broad, 
mighty, and calm conception, but of all that is divided, deli- 
cate, and tremulous; “variable as the shade, by the light 
quivering aspen made.” ‘To them, as first leaders of orna- 
mental design, belongs, of right, the praise of glistenings in 
gold, piercings in ivory, stainings in purple, burnishings 
in dark blue steel; of the fantasy of the Arabian roof 
—quartering of the Christian shield,—rubric and arabesque 
of Christian scripture; in fine, all enlargement, and all 
diminution of adorning thought, from the temple to the 
toy, and from the mountainous pillars of Agrigentum 
to the last fineness of fretwork in the Pisan Chapel of the 
Thorn. 

And in their doing all this, they stand as masters of human 
order and justice, subduing the animal nature guided by the 
spiritual one, as you see the Sicilian Charioteer stands, hold- 
ing his horse-reins, with the wild lion racing beneath him, and 
the flying angel above, on the beautiful coin of early Syracuse ; 
(lowest in Plate XXL). 

And the beginnings of Christian chivalary were in that 
Greek bridling of the dark and the white horses. 

206. Not that a Greek never made mistakes. He made as 
many as we do ourselves, nearly ;—he died of his mistakes at 
last—as we shall die of them; but so far he was separated 
from the herd of more mistaken and more wretched nations 
—so far as he was Greek—it was by his rightness. He lived, 
and worked, and was satisfied with the fatness of his land, and 
the fame of his deeds, by his justice, and reason, and modesty. 
He became Greculus esuriens, little, and hungry, and every 
man’s errand-boy, by his iniquity, and his competition, and 
his love of talk. But his Grecism was in having done, at least 
at one period of his dominion, more than anybody else, what 
“was modest, useful, and eternally true ; and as a workman, he 


410 ARATRA PENTELICTI. 


verily did, or first suggested the doing of, everything possible 
to man. 

Take Dzedalus, his great type of the practically executive 
craftsman, and the inventor of expedients in craftsmanship, 
(as distinguished from Prometheus, the institutor of moral 
order in art). Deedalus invents,—he, or his nephew,— 

The potter’s wheel, and all work in clay ; 

The saw, and all work in wood ; 

The masts and sails of ships, tad all modes of motion ; : 
(wings only proving too dangerous!) 

The entire art of minute ornament ; 

And the deceptive life of statues. 

By his personal toil, he involves the fatal labyrinth for 
Minos; builds an impregnable fortress for the Agrigentines ; 
adorns healing baths among the wild parsley fields of Selinus ; 
buttresses the precipices of Eryx, under the temple of Aph- 
rodite ; and for her. temple itself—finishes in exquisiteness 
the golden honeycomb. 

207. Take note of that last piece of his art: it is connected 
with many things which I must bring before you when we 
enter on the study of architecture. That study we shall begin 
at the foot of the Baptistery of Florence, which, of all build- 
ings known to me, unites the most perfect symmetry with the 
quaintest zoxAca, Then, from the tomb of your own Edward 
the Confessor, to the farthest shrine of- the opposite Arabian 
and Indian world, I must show you how the glittering and 
iridescent dominion of Dedalus prevails; and his ingenuity 
in division, inferposition, and labyrinthine sequence, more 
widely still. Only this last summer I found the dark red 
masses of the rough sandstone of Furness Abbey had been 
fitted by him, with no less pleasure than he had in carving 
them, into wedged hexagons—reminiscences of the honey- 
comb of Venus Erycina. His ingenuity plays around the 
framework of all the noblest things; and yet the brightness 
of it has a lurid shadow. The spot of the fawn, of the bird, 
and the moth, may be harmless. But Deedulus reigns no less 
over the spot of the leopard and snake. That cruel and venome 
ous power of his art is marked, in the legends of him, by 


THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 411 


his invention of the saw from the serpent’s tooth; and his 
seeking refuge, under blood-guiltiness, with Minos, who can 
judge evil, and measure, or remit, the penalty of it, but not 
reward good: Rhadamanthus only can measure that; but 
Minos is essentially the recognizer of evil deeds “ conoscitor 
delle peccata,” whom, therefore, you find in Dante under the 
form of the éprerov. %Cignesi con la coda tante volte, quan- 
tunque gradi vuol che giu sia messa.” 

And this peril of the influence of Deedalus is twofold ; first 
in leading us to delight in glitterings and semblances of 
things, more than in their form, or truth ;—admire the harle- 
quin’s jacket more than the hero’s strength; and love the 
gilding of the missal more than its words ;—but farther, and 
worse, the ingenuity of Dzdalus may even become bestial, an 
instinct for mechanical labour only, strangely involved with a 
feverish and ghastly cruelty :—(you will find this distinct in 
the intensely Deedal work of the Japanese) ; rebellious, finally, 
against the laws of nature and honour, and building labyrinths 
for monsters,—not combs for bees. 

208. Gentlemen, we of the rough northern race may never, 
perhaps, be able to learn from the Greek his reverence for 
beauty : but we may at least learn his disdain of mechanism : 
—of all work which he felt to be monstrous and inhuman in 
its imprudent dexterities. 

We hold ourselves, we English, to be good workmen. I do 
not think I speak with light reference to recent calamity, (for 
I myself lost a young relation, full of hope and good purpose, 
in the foundered ship London,) when I say that either an 
AXginetan or Ionian shipwright built ships that could be fought 
from, though they were under water; and neither of them 
would have been proud of having built one that would fill and 
sink helplessly if the sea washed over her deck, or turn upside 
down if a squall struck her topsail. 

Believe me, gentlemen, good workmanship consists in con- 
tinence and common sense, more than in frantic expatiation 
of mechanical ingenuity; and if you would be continent and 
rational, you had better learn more of Art than you do now, 
and less of Engineering. What is taking place at this very 


412 ARATRA PEHNTELICI. 


hour,* among the streets, once so bright, and avenues once so 
pleasant, of the fairest city in Europe, may surely lead us all 
to feel that the skill of Dedalus, set to build impregnable 
fortresses, is not so wisely applied as in framing the tpyrov 
movov,—the golden honeycomb. 


* The siege of Paris, at the time of the delivery of this Lecture, was 
in one of its most destructive phases, 


THE END, 


fae FUTURE (OF ENGLAND 


DELIVERED AT THE R. A. INSTITUTION, 
WOOLWICH, DECEMBER 14, 1869. 


THE FUTURE OF HNGLAND. 
(Delivered at the R. A. Institution, Woolwich, December 14, 1869.) 


I woutp fain have left to the frank expression of the moment, 
but fear I could not have found clear words—I cannot easily 
find them, even deliberately,—to tell you how glad I am, and 
yet how ashamed, to accept your permission to speak to you. 
Ashamed of appearing to think that I can tell you any truth 
which you have not more deeply felt than I; but glad in the 
thought that my less experience, and way of life sheltered 
from the trials, and free from the responsibilities of yours, 
may have left me with something of achild’s power of help to 
you; a sureness of hope, which may perhaps be the one thing 
that can be helpful to men who have done too much not to 
have often failed in doing all that they desired. And indeed, 
even the most hopeful of us, cannot but now be in many 
things apprehensive. Jor this at least we all know too well, 
that we are on the eve of a great political crisis, if not of 
political change. That a struggle is approaching between the 
newly-risen power of democracy and the apparently departing 
power of feudalism ; and another struggle, no less imminent, 
and far more dangerous, between wealth and pauperism. 
These two quarrels are constantly thought of as the same. 
They are being fought together, and an apparently common 
interest unites for the most part the millionaire with the 
noble, in resistance to a multitude, crying, part of it for 
bread and part of it for liberty. 

And yet no two quarrels can be more distinc. Riches— 
so far from being necessary to noblesse—are adverse to it. 
So utterly adverse, that the first character of all the Nobilities 
which have founded great dynasties in the world is to be 


416 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


poor ;—often poor by oath—always poor by generosity. And 
of every true knight in the chivalric ages, the first thing his- 
tory tells you is, that he never kept treasure for himself. 

Thus the causes of wealth and noblesse are not the same ; 
but opposite. On the other hand, the causes of anarchy and 
of the poor are not the same, but opposite. Side by side, in 
the same rank, are now indeed set the pride that revolts 
against authority, and the misery that appeals against avarice. 
But, so far from being a common cause, all anarchy is the 
forerunner of poverty, and all prosperity begins in obedience. 
So that thus, it has become impossible to give due support 
to the cause of order, without seeming to countenance injury ; 
and impossible to plead justly the claims of sorrow, without 
seeming to plead also for those of license. 

Let me try, then, to put in very brief terms, the real plan 
of. this various quarrel, and the truth of the cause on each 
side. Let us face that full truth, whatever it may be, and 
decide what part, according to our power, we should take in 
the quarrel. 

First. For eleven hundred years, all but five, since Char- 
lemagne set on his head the Lombard crown, the body of 
European people have submitted patiently to be governed ; 
generally by kings—always by single leaders of some kind. 
But for the last fifty years they have begun to suspect, and of 
late they have many of them concluded, that they have been 
on the whole ill-governed, or misgoverned, by their kings. 
Whereupon they say, more and more widely, ‘Let us hence- 
forth have no kings; and no government at all.” 

Now we said, we must face the full truth of the matter, in 
order to see what we are to do. And the truth is that the 
people have been misgoverned ;—that very little is to be said, 
hitherto, for most of their masters—and that certainly in 
many places they will try their new system of “no masters :” 
—and as that arrangement will be delightful to all foolish 
persons, and, at first, profitable to all wicked ones,—and as 
these classes are not wanting or unimportant in any human 
society,—the experiment is likely to be tried extensively. 
And the world may be quite content to endure much suffer- 





THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 417 


ing with this fresh hope, and retain its faith in anarchy, 
whatever comes of it, till it can endure no more. 

Then, secondly. The people have begun to suspect that 
one particular form of this past misgovernment has been, that 
their masters have set them to do all the work, and have 
themselves taken all the wages. In a word, that what was 
called governing them, meant only wearing fine clothes, and 
living on good fare at their expense. And I am sorry to say, 
the people are quite right in this opinion also. If you in- 
quire into the vital fact of the matter, this you will find to be 
the constant structure of European society for the thousand 
years of the feudal system ; it was divided into peasants who 
lived by working ; priests who lived by begging ; and knights 
who lived by pillaging; and as the luminous public mind 
becomes gradually cognizant of these facts, it will assuredly 
not suffer things to be altogether arranged that way any more ; 
and the devising of other ways will be an agitating business ; 
especially because the first impression of the intelligent popu- 
lace is, that whereas, in the dark ages, half the nation lived 
idle, in the bright ages to come, the whole of it may. 

Now, thirdly—and here is much the worst phase of the 
crisis. ‘This past system of misgovernment, especially during 
the last three hundred years, has prepared, by its neglect, a 
class among the lower orders which it is now peculiarly diffi- 
cult to govern. It deservedly lost their respect—but that was 
the least part of the mischief. The deadly part of it was, 
that the lower orders lost their habit, and at last their faculty, 
of respect ;—lost the very capability of reverence, which is 
the most precious part of the human soul. Exactly in the 
degree in which you can find creatures greater than yourself, 
to look up to, in that degree, you are ennobled yourself, and, 
in that degree, happy. If you could live always in the pres- 
ence of archangels, you would be happier than in that of 
men; but even if only in the company of admirable knights 
and beautiful ladies, the more noble and bright they were, 
and the more you could reverence their virtue the happier 
you would be. On the contrary, if you were condemned 
to live among a multitude of idiots, dumb, distorted and 





418 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


malicious, you would not be happy in the constant sense of 
your own superiority. Thus all real joy and power of prog- 
ress in humanity depend on finding something to rever- 
ence ; and all the baseness and misery of humanity begin in a 
habit of disdain. Now, by general misgovernment, I repeat, 
we have created in Europe a vast populace, and out of Eu- 
rope a still vaster one, which has lost even the power and 
conception of reverence ; *—which exists only in the wor- 
ship of itself—which can neither see anything beautiful 
around it, nor conceive anything virtuous above it; which 
has, towards all goodness and greatness, no other feelings 
than those of the lowest creatures—fear, hatred, or hunger ; 
a populace which has sunk below your appeal in their nature, 
as it has risen beyond your power in their multitude ;— 
whom you can now no more charm than you can the adder, 
nor discipline, than you can the summer fly. 

It is a crisis, gentlemen ; and time to think of it. I have 
roughly and broadly put it before you in its darkness. Let 
us look what we may find of light. 

Only the other day, in a journal which is a fairly repre- 
sentative exponent of the Conservatism of our day, and for 
the most part not at all in favor of strikes or other popular 
proceedings ; only about three weeks since, there was a lead- 
er, with this, or a similar, title—‘* What is to become of the 
House of Lords?” It startled me, for it seemed as if we 
were going even faster than I had thought, when such a ques- 
tion was put as a subject of quite open debate, in a journal 
meant chiefly for the reading of the middle and upper classes. 
Open or not—the debate is near. What is to become of 
them? And the answer to such question depends first on 
their being able to answer another question—‘* What is the use 
ofthem!” Forsome time back, I think the theory of the na- 
tion has been, that they are useful as impediments to busi- 
ness, so as to give time for second thoughts. But the nation 
is getting impatient of impediments to business; and cer- 
tainly, sooner or later, will think it needless to maintain these 

*Compare Time and Tide, $169, and Fors Clavigera, Letter XIV. 
page 9. 


THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 419 


expensive obstacles to its humors. And I have not heard, 
either in public, or from any of themselves, a clear expres- 
sion of their own conception of their use. So that it seems 
thus to become needful for all men to tell them, as our one 
quite clear-sighted teacher, Carlyle, has been telling us for 
many a year, that the use of the Lords of a country is to 
govern the country. If they answer that use, the country 
will rejoice in keeping them; if not, that will become of 
them which must of all things found to have lost their ser- 
viceableness. 

Here, therefore, is the one question, at this crisis, for 
them, and for us. Will they be lords indeed, and give 
us laws—dukes indeed, and give us guiding—princes indeed, 
and give us beginning, of truer dynasty, which shall not be 
soiled by covetousness, nor disordered by iniquity? Have 
they themselves sunk sofar as not to hope this? Are there 
yet any among them who can stand forward with open English 
brows, and say,—So far as in me lies, I will govern with my 
might, not for Dieu et mon Droit, but for the first grand 
reading of the war ery, from which that was corrupted, “ Dieu 
et Droit?” Among them I know there are some—among 
you, soldiers of England, I know there are many, who can do 
this ; and in you is our trust. I, one of the lower people 
of your country, ask of you in their name—you whom I will 
not any more call soldiers, but by the truer name of 
Knights ;—Equites of England. How many yet of you are 
there, knights errant now beyond all former fields of danger 
—knights patient now beyond all former endurance ; who 
still retain the ancient and eternal purpose of knighthood, to 
subdue the wicked, and aid the weak? To them, be they 
few or many, we English people call for help to the wretched- 
ness, and for rule over the baseness, of multitudes desolate 
and deceived, shrieking to one another this new gospel of 
their new religion. ‘Let the weak do as they can, and the 
wicked as they will.” 

I can hear you saying in your hearts, even the bravest 
of you, “ The time is past for all that.” Gentlemen, it is not 
so. The time has come for more than all that. Hitherto, 


490 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


soldiers have given their lives for false fame, and for cruel 
power. ‘The day is now when they must give their lives for 
true fame, and for beneficent power: and the work is near 
every one of you—close beside you—the means of it even 
thrust into your hands. The people are crying to you for 
command, and you stand there at pause, and silent. You 
think they don’t want to be commanded ; try them; deter- 
mine what is needful for them—honorable for them ; show it 
them, promise to bring them to it, and they will follow you 
through fire. ‘‘ Govern us,” they cry with one heart, though 
many minds. They can be governed still, these English ; 
they are men still; not gnats, nor serpents. They love their 
old ways yet, and their old masters, and their old land. 
They would fain live in it, as many as may stay there, if you 
will show them how, there, to live ;—or show them even, how, 
there, like Englishmen, to die. 

“To live in it, as many as may!” How many do you 
think may? How many can? How many do you want to 
live there? As masters, your first object must be to increase 
your power; and in what does the power of a country con- 
sist? Will you have dominion over its stones, or over its 
clouds, or over its souls? What do you mean by a great 
nation, but a great multitude of men who are true to each 
other, and strong, and of worth ? Now you can increase the 
multitude only definitely—your island has only so much 
standing room—but you can increase the worth imdefinitely. 
It is but a little island ;—suppose, little as it is, you were to 
fill it with friends? You may, and that easily. You must, 
and that speedily ; or there will be an end to this England of 
ours, and to all its loves and enmities. 

To fill this little island with true friends—men brave, 
wise, and happy! Is it so impossible, think you, after the 
world’s eighteen hundred years of Christianity, and our own 
thousand years of toil, to fill only this little white gleaming 
crag with happy creatures, helpful to each other? Africa, 
and India, and the Brazilian wide-watered plain, are these 
not wide enough for the ignorance of our race? have they 
not space enough for its pain? Must we remain here also 


THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 491 


savage,—here at enmity with each other,—here foodless, 
houseless, in rags,in dust, and without hope, as thousands 
and tens of thousands of us are lying? Do not think it, 
gentlemen. The thought that it is inevitable is the last infi. 
delity ; infidelity not to God only, but to every creature and 
every law that He has made. Are we to think that the 
earth was only shaped to be a globe of torture; and that 
there cannot be one spot of it where peace can rest, or justice 
reign? Where are men ever to be happy, if not in.England ? 
by whom shall they ever be taught to do right, if not by you ? 
Are we not of a race first among the strong ones of the earth ; 
the blood in us incapable of weariness, unconquerable by 
grief ? Have we not a history of which we can hardly think 
without becoming insolent in our just pride of it? Can we 
dare, without passing every limit of courtesy to other nations, 
to say how much more we have to be proud of in our ances- 
tors than they? Among our ancient monarchs, great crimes 
stand out as monstrous and strange. But their valor, and, 
according to their understanding, their benevolence, are con- 
stant. ‘The Wars of the Roses, which are as a fearful crimson 
shadow on our land, represent the normal condition of other 
nations; while from the days of the Heptarchy downwards 
we have had examples given us, in all ranks, of the most 
varied and exalted virtue ; a heap of treasure that no moth 
can corrupt, and which even our traitorship, if we are to be- 
come traitors to it, cannot sully. 

And this is the race, then, that we know not any more how 
to govern! and this the history which we are to behold 
broken off by sedition! and this is the country, of all others, 
where life is to become difficult to the honest, and ridiculous 
to the wise! And the catastrophe, forsooth, is to come just 
when we have been making swiftest progress beyond the wis- 
dom and wealth of the past. Our cities are a wilderness of 
spinning wheels instead of palaces ; yet the people have not 
clothes. We have blackened every leaf of English greenwood 
with ashes, and the people die of cold; our harbors are a 
forest of merchant ships, and the people die of hunger. 

Whose fault is it? Yours, gentlemen; yours only. You 


422 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


alone can feed them, and clothe, and bring into their right 
minds, for you only can govern—that is to say, you only can 
educate them. 

Educate, or govern, they are one and the same word. 
Education does not mean teaching people to know what they 
do not know. It means teaching them to behave as they do 
not behave. And the true “compulsory education ” which 
the people now ask of you is not catechism, but drill. It is 
not teaching the youth of England the shapes of letters and 
the tricks of numbers; and then leaving them to turn their 
arithmetic to roguery, and their literature to lust. It is, on 
the contrary, training them into the perfect exercise and 
kingly continence of their bodies and souls. It is a painful, 
continual, and difficult work; to be done by kindness, by 
watching, by warning, by precept; and by praise,—but above 
all—by example. 

Compulsory! Yes, by all means! ‘Go ye out into 
the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in.” 
Compulsory! Yes, andgratisalso. Dei Gratia, they must be 
taught, as, Det Gratia, you are set to teach them. I hear 
strange talk continually, “‘ how difficult it is to make people 
pay for being educated!” Why, Ishould think so! Do you 
make your children pay for their education, or do you give it 
them compulsorily, and gratis? You do not expect them to 
pay you for their teaching, except by becoming good chil- 
dren. Why should you expect a peasant to pay for his, ex- 
cept by becoming a good man ?—payment enough, I think, 
if we knew it. Payment enough to himself, as tous, For 
that is another of our grand popular mistakes—people are 
always thinking of education as a means of livelihood. Edu- 
cation is not a profitable business, but a costly one; nay, 
even the best attainments of it are always unprofitable, in any 
terms of coin. No nation ever made its bread either by its 
great arts, or its great wisdoms. By its minor arts or manu- 
factures, by its practical knowledges, yes: but its noble 
scholarship, its noble philosophy, and its noble art, are always 
to be bought as a treasure, not sold foralivelihood. You do 
not learn that you may live—you live that you may learn. 


THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 423 


You are to spend on National Education, and to be spent for 
it, and to make by it, not more money, but better men ;—to 
get into this British Island the greatest possible number of 
good and brave Englishmen. They are to be your ‘ money’s 
worth.” 

But where is the money to come from? Yes, that is to be 
asked, Let us, as quite the first business in this our national 
crisis, look not only into our affairs, but into our accounts, 
and obtain some general notion how we annually spend our 
money, and what we are getting for it. Observe, I do not 
mean to inquire into the public revenue only; of that some 
account is rendered already. But let us do the best we can 
to set down the items of the national private expenditure ; 
and know what we spend altogether, and how. 

To begin with this matter of education. You probably 
have nearly all seen the admirable lecture lately given by 
Captain Maxse, at Southampton. It contains a clear state- 
ment of the facts at present ascertained as to our expenditure 
in that respect. It appears that of our public moneys, for 
every pound that we spend on education we spend twelve 
either in charity or punishment ;—ten millions a year in pau- 
perism and crime, and eight hundred thousand in instruction. 
Now Captain Maxse adds to this estimate of ten millions pub- 
lic money spent on crime and want, a more or less conjectural 
sum of eight millions for private charities. My impression is 
that this is much beneath the truth, but at all events it leaves 
out of consideration much the heaviest and saddest form of 
charity—the maintenance, by the working members of fami- 
lies, of the unfortunate or ill-conducted persons whom the 
general course of misrule now leaves helpless to be the bur- 
den of the rest. 

Now I want to get first at some, I do not say approx- 
imate, but at all events some suggestive, estimate of the quan- 
tity of real distress and misguided life in this country. Then 
next, I want some fairly representative estimate of our private 
expenditure in luxuries. We won’t spend more, publicly, it 
appears, than eight hundred thousand a year, on educating 
men gratis. I want to know, as nearly as possible, what we 


424 THE CROWN OF WILD OL-2Viz. 


spend privately a year, in educating horses gratis. Let us, at 
least, quit ourselves in this from the taunt of Rabshakeh, and 
see that for every horse we train also a horseman; and that 
the rider be at least as high-bred as the horse, not jockey, 
but chevalier. Again, we spend eight hundred thousand, 
which is certainly a great deal of money, in making rough 
minds bright. I want to know how much we spend annually 
in making rough stones bright; that is to say, what may be 
the united annual sum, or near it, of our jewellers’ bills. So 
much we pay for educating children gratis ;—how much for 
educating diamonds gratis? and which pays best for bright- 
ening, the spirit or the charcoal? Let us get those two items 
set down with some sincerity, and a few more of the same 
kind. Publicly set down. We must not be ashamed of the 
way we spend our money. If our right hand is not to know 
what our left does, it must not be because it would be 
ashamed if it did. 

That is, therefore, quite the first practical thing to be done. 
Let every man who wishes well to his country, render it yearly 
an account of his income, and of the main heads of his ex- 
penditure; or, if he is ashamed to do so, let him no more 
impute to the poor their poverty as a crime, nor set them to 
break stones in order to frighten them from committing it. 
To lose money ill is indeed often a crime; but to get it ill is 
a worse one, and to spend it ill, worst of all. You object, 
Lords of England, to increase, to the poor, the wages you give 
them, because they spend them, you say, unadvisedly. Ren- 
der them, therefore, an account of the wages which they give 
you ; and show them, by your example, how to spend theirs, to 
the last farthing advisedly. 

It is indeed time to make this an acknowledged sub- 
ject of instruction, to the workingman,—how to spend his 
wages. For, gentlemen, we must give that instruction, 
whether we will or no, one way or the other. We have given 
it in years gone by; and now we find fault with our peasantry 
for having been too docile, and profited too shrewdly by our 
tuition. Only a few days since I had a letter from the wife of 
a village rector, a man of common sense and kindness, who 


THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 425 


was greatly troubled in his mind because it was precisely the 
men who got highest wages in summer that came desti- 
tute to his door in the winter. Destitute, and of riotous 
temper—for their method of spending wages in their period of 
prosperity was by sitting two days a week in the tavern par- 
lor, ladling port wine, not out of bowls, but out of buckets. 
Well, gentlemen, who taught them that method of festivity? 
Thirty years ago, I, a most inexperienced freshman, went to 
my first college supper; at the head of the table sat a noble- 
man of high promise and of admirable powers, since dead of 
palsy; there also we had in the midst of us, not buckets, 
indeed, but bowls as large as buckets; there also, we helped 
ourselves with ladles. ‘here (for this beginning of college 
education was compulsory), I choosing ladlefuls of punch in- 
stead of claret, because I was then able, unperceived to 
pour them into my waistcoat instead of down my throat, 
stood it out to the end, and helped to carry four of my fellow- 
students, one of them the son of the head of a college, head 
foremost, down stairs and home. 

Such things are no more; but the fruit of them re- 
mains, and will for many a day to come. The laborers whom 
you cannot now shut out of the ale-house are only the too 
faithful disciples of the gentlemen who were wont to shut 
themselves into the dining-room. The gentlemen have not 
thought it necessary, in order to correct their own habits, to 
diminish their incomes; and, believe me, the way to deal 
with your drunken workman is not to lower his wages,—but 
to mend his wits.* 

And if indeed we do not yet see quite clearly how to 
deal with the sins of our poor brother, it is possible that our 
dimness of sight may still have other causes that can be cast 
out. There are two opposite cries of the great liberal and 
conservative parties, which are both most right, and worthy 
to be rallying cries. On their side “let every man have his 
chance ;” on yours “let every man stand in his place.” 
Yes, indeed, let that be so, every man in his place, and 


* See Appendix, ‘‘Modern Education,” and compare § 70 of Time 
and Tide. 


496 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


every man fit for it. See that he holds that place from 
Heaven’s Providence ; and not from his family’s Providence. 
Let the Lords Spiritual quit themselves of simony, we laymen 
will look after the heretics for them. Let the Lords Tem- 
poral quit themselves of nepotism, and we will take care of 
their authority for them. Publish for us, you soldiers, an 
army gazette, in which the one subject of daily intelligence 
shall be the grounds of promotion; a gazette which shall 
simply tell us, what there certainly can be no detriment to 
the service in our knowing, when any officer is appointed to 
a new command,—what his former services and successes 
have been,—whom he has superseded,—and on what ground. 
It will be always a satisfaction to us; it may sometimes be an 
advantage to you: and then, when there is really necessary 
debate respecting reduction of wages, let us always begin not 
with the wages of the industrious classes, but with those of 
the idle ones. Let there there be honorary titles, if people 
like them ; but let there be no honorary incomes. 

So much for the master’s motto, ‘“ Every man in his 
place.” Next for the laborer’s motto, ‘Every man _ his 
chance.” Let us mend that for them a little, and say, 
“Every man his certainty ”—certainty, that if he does well, 
he will be honored, and aided, and advanced in such degree 
as may be fitting for his faculty and consistent with his 
peace ; and equal certainty that if he does ill, he will by sure 
justice be judged, and by sure punishment be chastised ; if 
it may be, corrected; and if that may not be, condemned. 
That is the right reading of the Republican motto, “ Every 
man his chance.” And then, with such a system of govern- 
ment, pure, watchful and just, you may approach your great 
problem of national education, or in other words, of national 
employment. For all education begins in work. What we 
think, or what we know, or what we believe, is in the end, of 
little consequence. The only thing of consequence is what 
we do; and for man, woman, or child, the first point of edu- 
cation is to make them do their best. It is the law of good 
economy to make the best of everything. How much more 
to make the best of every creature! Therefore, when your 


THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 497 


pauper comes to you and asks for bread, ask-of him instantly 
—What faculty have you? What can you do best? Can 
you drive a nail into wood? Go and mend the parish fences. 
Can you lay a brick? Mend the walls of the cottages where 
the wind comes in. Can you lift a spadeful of earth? Turn 
this field up three feet deep all over. Can you only drag a 
weight with your shoulders? Stand at the bottom of this 
hill and help up the overladen horses. Can you weld iron 
and chisel stone? Fortify this wreck-strewn coast into a 
harbor; and change these shifting sands into fruitful ground. 
Wherever death was, bring life; that is to be your work; 
that your parish refuge; that your education. So and no 
otherwise can we meet existent distress. But for the contin- 
ual education of the whole people, and for their future hap- 
piness, they must have such consistent employment as shall 
develop all the powers of the fingers, and the limbs, and the 
brain: and that development is only to be obtained by hand- 
labor, of which you have these four great divisions—hand- 
labor on the earth, hand-labor on the sea, hand-labor in art, 
hand-labor in war. Of the last two of these I cannot speak 
to-night, and of the first two only with extreme brevity. 

I. Hand-labor on the earth, the work of the husbandman 
and of the shepherd ;—to dress the earth and to keep the 
flocks of it—the first task of man, and the final one—the 
education always of noblest lawgivers, kings and teachers ; 
the education of Hesiod, of Moses, of David, of all the true 
strength of Rome; and all its tenderness: the pride of Cin- 
cinnatus, and the inspiration of Virgil. Hand-labor on the 
earth, and the harvest of it brought forth with singing :—not 
steam-piston labor on the earth, and the harvest of it brought 
forth with steam-whistling. You will have no prophet’s voice 
accompanied by that shepherd’s pipe, and pastoral symphony. 
Do you know that lately, in Cumberland, in the chief pastoral 
district of England—in Wordsworth’s own home—a proces- 
sion of villagers on their festa day provided for themselves, 
by way of music, a steam-plough whistling at the head of 
them. 

- Give me patience while I put the principle of machine 


428 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


labor before you, as clearly and in as short compass as pos- 
sible ; it is one that should be known at this juncture. Sup- 
pose a farming proprietor needs to employ a hundred men on 
his estate, and that the labor of these hundred men is enough, 
but not more than enough, to till all his land, and to raise 
from it food for his own family, and for the hundred laborers. 
He is obliged, under such circumstances, to maintain all the 
men in moderate comfort, and can only by economy accumu- 
late much for himself. But, suppose he contrive a machine 
that will easily do the work of fifty men, with only one man 
to watch it. This sounds lke a great advance in civilization. 
The farmer of course gets his machine made, turns off the 
fifty men, who may starve or emigrate at their choice, and 
now he can keep half of the produce of his estate, which for- 
merly went to feed them, all to himself. That is the essential 
and constant operation of machinery among us at this moment. 

Nay, it is at first answered ; no man can in reality keep half 
the produce of an estate to himself, nor can he in the end 
keep more than his own human share of anything ; his riches 
must diffuse themselves at some time ; he must maintain some- 
body else with them, however he spendsthem. Thatis mainly 
true (not altogether so), for food and fuel are in ordinary cir- 
cumstances personally wasted by rich people, in quantities 
which would save many lives. One of my own great luxuries, 
for instance, is candlelight—and I probably burn, for myself 
alone, as many candles during the winter, as would comfort 
the old eyes, or spare the young ones, of a whole rushlighted 
country village. Still, it is mainly true, that it is not by their 
personal waste that rich people prevent the lives of the poor. 
This is the way they doit. Let me go back to my farmer. 
He has got his machine made, which goes creaking, scream- 
ing, and occasionally exploding, about modern Arcadia. He | 
has turned off his fifty men to starve. Now, at some distance 
from his own farm, there is another on which the laborers 
were working for their bread in the same way, by tilling the 
land. The machinist sends over to these, saying—‘I have 
got food enough for you without your digging or ploughing 
any more. I can maintain you in other occupations instead 


THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 429 


of ploughing that land ; if you rake in its gravel you will find 
some hard stones—you shall grind those on mills till they 
glitter; then, my wife shall wear a necklace of them. Also, 
if you turn up the meadows below you will find some fine 
white clay, of which you shall make a porcelain service for me: 
and the rest of the farm I want for pasture for horses for my 
carriage—and you shall groom them, and some of you ride 
behind the carriage with staves in your hands, and I will keep 
you much fatter for doing that than you can keep yourselves 
by digging.” 

Well—but it is answered, are we to have no diamonds, 
nor china, nor pictures, nor footmen, then—but all to be 
farmers? I am not saying what we ought to do, I want 
only to show you with perfect clearness first what we are do- 
ing ; and that, I repeat, is the upshot of machine-contriving 
in this country. And observe its effect on the national 
streugth. Without machines, you have a hundred and fifty 
yeomen ceady to join for defence of the land. You get your 
machine, starve fifty of them, make diamond-cutters or foot- 
men of as many more, and for your national defence against 
an enemy, you have now, and can have, only fifty men, in- 
stead of a hundred and fifty ; these also now with minds 
much alienated from you as their chief,* and the rest, lapi- 
daries or footmen ; and a steam plough. 

That is one effect of machinery; but at all events, if we 
have thus lost in men, we have gained in riches; instead 
of happy human souls, we have at least got pictures, china, 
horses, and are ourselves better off than we were before. 
But very often, and in much of our machine-contriving, even 
that result does not follow. We are not one whit the richer 
for the machine, we only employ it for our amusement. For 
observe, our gaining in riches depends on the men who are 
out of employment consenting to be starved, or sent out of 
the country. But suppose they do not consent passively to 
be starved, but some of them become criminals, and have to 
be taken charge of and fed at a much greater cost than if 


* (They were deserting, I am informed, in the early part of this year, 
1873, at the rate of a regiment a week. ] 


430 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


they were at work, and, others, paupers, rioters, and the like, 
then you attain the real outcome of modern wisdom and in- 
genuity. You have your hundred men honestly at country 
work ; but you don’t like the sight of human beings in your 
fields ; you like better to see a smoking kettle. You pay, as 
an amateur, for that pleasure, and you employ your fifty men 
in picking oakum, or begging, rioting, and thieving. 

By hand-labor, therefore, and that alone, we are to till 
the ground. By hand labor also to plough the sea; both 
for food, and in commerce, and in war: not with floating 
kettles there neither, but with hempen bridle, and the winds 
of heaven in harness. That is the way the power of Greece 
rose on her Eegean, the power of Venice on her Adria, of 
Amalfi in her blue bay, of the Norman sea-riders from the 
North Cape to Sicily :—so, your own dominion also of the 
past. Of the past mind you. On the Baltic and the Nile, 
your power is already departed. By machinery you would 
advance to discovery ; by machinery you would carry your 
commerce ;—you would be engineers instead of sailors ; and 
instantly in the North seas you are beaten among the ice, 
and before the very Gods of Nile, beaten among the sand. 
Agriculture, then, by the hand or by the plough drawn only 
by animals ; and shepherd and pastoral husbandry, are to be 
the chief schools of Englishmen. And this most royal acad- 
emy of all academies you have to open over all the land, puri- 
fying your heaths and hills, and waters, and keeping them 
full of every kind of lovely natural organism, in tree, herb, 
and living creature. All land that is waste and ugly, you 
must redeem into ordered fruitfulness ; all ruin, desolateness, 
imperfectness of hut or habitation, you must do away with ; 
and throughout every village and city of your English domin- 
ion there must not be a hand that cannot find a helper, nor 
a heart that cannot find a comforter. 

‘“‘ How impossible!” I know, you are thinking. Ah! So 
far from impossible, it is easy, it is natural, it is necessary, 
and I declare to you that, sooner or later, it must be done, at 
our peril. If now our English lords of land will fix this idea 
steadily before them ; take the people to their hearts, trust 


THE FUTURH OF ENGLAND. 431 


to their loyalty, lead their labor ;—then indeed there will be 
princes again in the midst of us, worthy of the island throne, 


‘‘This royal throne of kings—this sceptred isle— 
This fortress built by nature for herself 
Against infection, and the hand of war ; 

This precious stone set in the silver sea; 
This happy breed of men—this little world: 
This other Eden—Demi-Paradise. ” 


But if they refuse to do this, and hesitate and equivocate, 
clutching through the confused catastrophe of all things only 
at what they can still keep stealthily for themselves—their 
doom is nearer than even their adversaries hope, and it will 
be deeper than even their despisers dream. 

That, believe me, is the work you have to do in Eng- 
land; and out of England you have room for everything 
else you care to do. Are her dominions in the world so narrow 
that she can find no place to spin cotton in but Yorkshire? 
We may organize emigration into an infinite power. We 
may assemble troops of the more adventurous and ambitious 
of our youth ; we may send them on truest foreign service, 
founding new seats of authority, and centres of thought, in 
uncultivated and unconquered lands; retaining the full affec- 
tion to the native country no less in our colonists than in our 
armies, teaching them to maintain allegiance to their father- 
land in labor no less than in battle; aiding them with free 
hand in the prosecution of discovery, and the victory over 
adverse natural powers ; establishing seats of every manufact- 
ure in the climates and places best fitted for it, and bringing 
ourselves into due alliance and harmony of skill with the dex- 
terities of every race, and the wisdoms of every tradition and 
every tongue. 

And then you may make England itself the centre of the 
learning, of the arts, of the courtesies and felicities of the 
world. You may cover her mountains with pasture ; her 
plains with corn, her valleys with the lily, and her gardens 
with the rose. You may bring together there in peace the 


432 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


wise and the pure, and the gentle of the earth, and by their 
word, command through its farthest darkness the birth of 
‘God's first creature, which was Light.” You know whose 
words those are; the words of the wisest of Englishmen, He, 
and with him the wisest of all other great nations, have 
spoken always to men of this hope, and they would not hear. 
Plato, in the dialogue of Critias, his last, broken off at his 
death—Pindar, in passionate singing of the fortunate islands 
—Virgil, in the prophetic tenth eclogue—Bacon, in his fable 
of the New Atlantis—More, in the book which, too impa- 
tiently wise, became the bye-word of fools—these, all, have 
told us with one voice what we should strive to attain; they 
not hopeless of it, but for our follies forced, as it seems, by 
heaven, to tell us only partly and in parables, lest we should 
hear them and obey. 

Shall we never listen to the words of these wisest of men? 
Then listen at least to the words of your children—let us in 
the lips of babes. and sucklings find our strength; and see 
that we do not make them mock instead of pray, when we 
teach them, night and morning, to ask for what we believe 
never can be granted ;—that the will of the Father,—which 
is, that His creatures may be righteous and happy—should 
be done, on earth, as it is in Heaven. 


NOTES 


ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA 


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NOTES ON THE POLITICAL LCON- 
OMY OF PRUSSIA. 


I am often accused of inconsistency; but believe myself 
defensible against the charge with respect to what I have 
said on nearly every subject except that of war. It is impos- 
sible for me to write consistently of war, for the groups of 
facts I have gathered about it lead me to two precisely oppo- 
site conclusions. 

When I find this the case, in other matters, I am silent, till 
I can choose my conclusion: but, with respect to war, I am 
forced to speak, by the necessities of the time; and forced to 
act, one way or another. The conviction on which [ act is, 
that it causes an incalculable amount of avoidable human 
suffering, and that it ought to cease among Christian nations; 
and if therefore any of my boy-friends desire to be soldiers, 
I try my utmost to bring them into what I conceive to be a 
better mind. But, on the other hand, I know certainly that 
the most beautiful characters yet developed among men have 
been formed in war ;—that all great nations have been war- 
rior nations, and that the only kinds of peace which we are 
likely to get in the present age are ruinous alike to the intel- 
lect, and the heart. 

The lecture on “‘ War,” in this volume, addressed to young 
soldiers, had for its object to strengthen their trust in the vir- 
tue of their profession. It is inconsistent with itself, in its clos- 
ing appeal] to women, praying them to use their influence to 
bring wars to an end. And I have been hindered from com- 
pleting my long intended notes on the economy of the Kings 
of Prussia by continually increasing doubt how far the ma- 


436 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


chinery and discipline of war, under which they learned the 
art of government, was essential for such lesson; and what 
the honesty and sagacity of the Friedrich who so nobly re- 
paired his ruined Prussia, might have done for the happiness 
of his Prussia, unruined. 

In war, however, or in peace, the character which Carlyle 
chiefly loves him for, and in which Carlyle has shown him to 
differ from all kings up to this time succeeding him, is his 
constant purpose to use every power entrusted to him for the 
good of his people; and be, not in name only, but in heart 
and hand, their king. 

Not in ambition, but in natural instinct of duty. Fried- 
rich, born to govern, determines to govern to the best of his 
faculty. That “‘ best” may sometimes be unwise; and self- 
will, or love of glory, may have their oblique hold on his 
mind, and warp it this way or that; but they are never prin- 
cipal with him. He believes that war is necessary, and main- 
tains it; sees that peace is necessary, and calmly persists in 
the work of it to the day of his death, not claiming therein 
more praise than the head of any ordinary household, who 
rules it simply because it is his place, and he must not yield 
the mastery of it to another. 

How far, in the future, it may be possible for men to gain 
the strength necessary for kingship without either fronting 
death, or inflicting it, seems to me not at present determina- 
ble. The historical facts are that, broadly speaking, none 
but soldiers, or persons with a soldierly faculty, have ever 
yet shown themselves fit to be kings; and that no other men 
are so gentle, so just, or so clear-sighted. Wordsworth’s 
character of the happy warrior cannot be reached in the 
height of it but by a warrior ; nay, so much is it beyond com- 
mon strength that I had supposed the entire meaning of it 
to be metaphorical, until one of the best soldiers of England 
himself read me the poem,* and taught me, what I might 
have known, had I enough watched his own life, that it was 
entirely literal. There is nothing of so high reach distinctly 
demonstrable in Friedrich: but I see more and more, as I 


* The late Sir Herbert Edwardes. 


POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 437 


grow older, that the things which are the most worth, en- 
cumbered among the errors and faults of every man’s nature, 
are never clearly demonstrable ; and are often most forcible 
when they are scarcely distinct to his own conscience,—how 
much less, clamorous for recognition by others! 

Nothing can be more beautiful than Carlyle’s showing of 
this, to any careful reader of Friedrich. But careful readers 
are but one in the thousand ; and by the careless, the masses 
of detail with which the historian must deal are insurmount- 
able. 

My own notes, made for the special purpose of hunting 
down the one point of economy, though they cruelly spoil 
Carlyle’s own current and method of thought, may yet be use- 
ful in enabling readers, unaccustomed to books involving so 
vast a range of conception, to discern what, on this one sub- 
ject only, may be gathered from that history. On any other 
subject of importance, similar gatherings might be made of 
other passages. The historian has to deal with all at once. 

I therefore have determined to print here, as a sequel to the 
Essay on War, my notes from the first volume of Friedrich, 
on the economies of Brandenburg, up to the date of the estab- 
lishment of the Prussian monarchy. The economies of the 
first three Kings of Prussia I shall then take up in Fors 
Clavigera, finding them fitter for examination in connection 
with the subject of that book than of this. 

I assume, that the reader will take down his first volume of 
Carlyle, and read attentively the passages to which I refer him. 
I give the reference first to the largest edition, in six volumes 
(1858-1865) ; then, in parenthesis, to the smallest or “ people’s 
edition” (1872-1873). The pieces which I have quoted in my 
own text are for the use of readers who may not have ready 
access to the book ; and are enough for the explanation of the 
points to which I wish them to direct their thoughts in read- 
ing such histories of soldiers or soldier-kingdoms, 


438 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


i 
Year 928 to 936.—Dawn of Order in Christian Germany. 
Book II. Chap. i. p. 67 (47). 


Henry THE Fow er, “the beginning of German kings,” is & 
mighty soldier in the cause of peace ; his essential work the 
building and organization of fortified towns for the protection 
of men. 

Read page 72 with utmost care (51), ‘‘He fortified towns,” 
to end of smallprint. I have added some notes on the matter 
in my lecture on Giovanni Pisano ; but whether you can glance 
at them or not, fix in your mind this institution of truly civil 
or civic building in Germany, as distinct from the building of 
baronial castles for the security of robbers: and of a standing 
army consisting of every ninth man, called a “ burgher” 
(‘‘ townsman”)—a soldier, appointed to learn that profession 
that he may guard the walls—the exact reverse of our notion 
of a burgher. . 

Frederick’s final idea of his army is, indeed, only this. 

Brannibor, a chief fortress of the Wends, is thus taken, and 
further strengthened by Henry the Fowler; wardens appoint- 
ed for it; and thus the history of Brandenburg begins. On 
all frontiers, also, this ‘beginning of German kings” has 
his “Markgraf.” “Ancient of the marked place.” Read 
page 73, measuredly, learning it by heart, if it may be. (51- 


IL. 
936-1000.—History of Nascent Brandenburg. 


Tue passage I last desired you to read ends with this sen- 
tence: “The sea-wall you build, and what main floodgates 
you establish in it, will depend on the state of the outer 
sea.” 

From this time forward you haye to keep clearly separate 


POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 439 


in your minds, (a) the history of that outer sea, Pagan Scan- 
dinavia, Russia, and Bor-Russia, or Prussia proper; (B) the 
history of Henry the Fowler’s Eastern and Western Marches; 
asserting themselves gradually as Austria and the Nether- 
lands; and (c) the history of this inconsiderable fortress of 
Brandenburg, gradually becoming considerable, and the cap- 
ital city of increasing district between them. ‘That last his- 
tory, however, Carlyle is obliged to leave vague and gray for 
two hundred years after Henry’s death. Absolutely dim for 
the first century, in which nothing is evident but that its 
wardens or Markgraves had no peaceable possession of the 
place. ead the second paragraph in page 74 (52-3), “in 
old books” to “reader,” and the first in page 83 (59) ‘‘mean- 
while” to ‘substantial,” consecutively. They bring the 
story of Brandenburg itself down, at any rate, from 936 to 
1000. 


Hit. 
936-1000.—State of the Outer Sea. 


Reap now Chapter IL beginning at page 76 (54), wherein 
you will get account of the beginning of vigorous missionary 
work on the outer sea, in Prussia proper; of the death of St. 
Adalbert, and of the purchase of his dead body by the Duke 
of Poland. 

You will not easily understand Carlyle’s laugh in this chap- 
ter, unless you have learned yourself to laugh in sadness, and 
to laugh in love. 

“No Czech blows his pipe in the woodlands without certain 
precautions and preliminary fuglings of a devotional nature.” 
(Imagine St. Adalbert, in spirit, at the railway station in 
Birmingham !) 

My own main point for notice in the chapter is the pur- 
chase of his body for its “weight in gold.” Swindling angels 
held it up in the scales; it did not weigh so much as a web 
of gossamer. ‘Had such excellent odor, too, and came for 
a mere nothing of gold,” says Carlyle. Itis one of the first 
commercial transactions of Germany, but I regret the con- 


440 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


duct of the angels on the occasion. Evangelicalism has been 
proud of ceasing to invest in relics, its swindling angels help- 
ing it to better things, as it supposes. For my own part, I 
believe Christian Germany could not have bought at this 
time any treasure more precious ; nevertheless, the missionary 
work itself you find is wholly vain. The difference of opinion 
between St. Adalbert and the Wends, on Divine matters, 
does not signify to the Fates. They will not have it disputed 
about; and end the dispute adversely, to St. Adalbert—ad- 
versely, even, to Brandenburg and its civilizing power, as you 
will immediately see. 


Lo 
1000-1030.—History of Brandenburg in Trouble. 
Book II. Chap. iii, p. 83 (59). 


Tue adventures of Brandenburg in contest with Pagan 
Prussia, irritated, rather than amended, by St. Adalbert. In 
1023, roughly, a hundred years after Henry the Fowler’s 
death, Brandenburg is taken by the Wends, and its first line 
of Markgraves ended; its population mostly butchered, espe- 
cially the priests; and the Wends’ God, Triglaph, ‘‘some- 
thing like three whales’ cubs combined by boiling,” set up on 
the top of St. Mary’s Hill. 

Here is an adverse ‘‘Doctrine of the Trinity” which has 
its supporters! It is wonderful,—this Tripod and Triglyph 
—three-footed, three-cut faith of the North and South, the 
leaf of the oxalis, and strawberry, and clover, fostering the 
same in their simple manner. I suppose it to be the most 
savage and natural of notions about Deity; a prismatic 
idol-shape of Him, rude as a triangular log, as a trefoil grass. 
I do not find how long Triglaph held his state on St. Mary’s 
Hill. ‘For a time,” says Carlyle, ‘the priests all slain or 
fled—shadowy Markeraves the like—church and state lay in 
ashes, and Triglaph, like a triple porpoise under the influence 
of laudanum, stood, I know not whether on his head or his 
tail, aloft on the Harlungsberg, as the Supreme of this Uni- 
verse for the time being.” 


POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 441 


V. 


1030-1130.— Brandenburg under the Ditmarsch Markgraves, 
or Ditmarsch-Stade Markgraves. 


Book II. Chap. iii. p. 85 (60). 


Or Anglish, or Saxon breed. They attack Brandenburg, 
under its Triglyphic protector, take it—dethrone him, and 
hold the town for a hundred years, their history “stamped 
beneficially on the face of things, Markgraf after Markgraf 
getting killed in the business. ‘Erschlagen,’ ‘slain,’ fight- 
ing with the Heathen—say the old books, and pass on to an- 
other.” If weallow seven years to Triglaph—we get a clear 
century for these—as above indicated. They die out in 
1130. 


VI. 


1130-1170.—Brandenburg under Albert the Bear. 
Book II. Chap iv. p. 91 (64). 


He is the first of the Ascanien Markgraves, whose castle of 
Ascanica is on the northern slope of the Hartz Mountains, 
‘ruins still dimly traceable.” 

There had been no soldier or king of note among the Dit- 
marsch Markeraves, so that you will do well to fix in your 
mind successively the three men, Henry the Fowler, St. Adal- 
bert, and Albert the Bear. A soldier again, and a strong one. 
Named the Bear only from the device on his shield, first 
wholly definite Markgraf of Brandenburg that there is, “ and 
that the luckiest of events for Brandenburg.” Read page 
93 (66) carefully, and note this of his economies. 


Nothing better is known to me of Albert the Bear than his 
introducing large numbers of Dutch Netherlanders into those 
countries ; men thrown out of work, who already knew how 


442 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


to deal with bog and sand, by mixing and delving, and who 
first taught Brandenburg what greenness and cow-pasture 
was. The Wends, in presence of such things, could not but 
consent more and more to efface themselves—either to be- 
come German, and grow milk and cheese in the Dutch man- 
ner, or to disappear from the world. 


After two-hundred and fifty years of barking and worry- 
ing, the Wends are now finally reduced to silence; their 
anarchy well buried and wholesome Dutch cabbage planted 
over it; Albert did several great things in the world; but 
this, for posterity, remains his memorable feat. Not done 
quite easily, but done: big destinies of nations or of persons 
are not founded gratis in this world, He had a sore, toil- 
some time of it, coercing, warring, managing among his fel- 
low-creatures, while his day’s work lasted—fifty years or so, 
for it began early. He died in his castle of Ballenstadt, 
peaceably among the Hartz Mountains at last, in the year 
1170, age about sixty-five. 


Now, note in all this the steady gain of soldiership enforc- 
ing order and agriculture, with St. Adalbert giving higher 
strain to the imagination. Henry the Fowler establishes 
walled towns, fighting for mere peace. Albert the Bear plants 
the country with cabbages, fighting for his cabbage-fields. 
And the disciples of St. Adalbert, generally, have succeeded 
in substituting some idea of Christ for the idea of Triglaph. 
Some idea only ; other ideas than of Christ haunt even to 
this day those Hartz Mountains among which Albert the Bear 
dies so peacefully. Mephistopheles, and all his ministers, 
inhabit there, commanding mephitic clouds and earth-born 
dreams. 


POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 443 


VII. 


1170-1320.—Brandenburg 150 years under the Ascanien 
Markgraves. 


Vol. I. Book II. Chap. viii. p. 185 (96). 


** Wuotrsome Dutch cabbages continued to be more and 
more planted by them in the waste sand: intrusive chaos, and — 
Trigiaph held at bay by them,” till at last in 1240, seventy 
years after the great Bear’s death, they fortify a new Burg, a 
“little rampart,” Wehrlin, diminutive of Wehr (or vallum), 
eradually smoothing itself, with a little echo of the Bear in it 
too, into Ber-lin, the oily river Spree flowing by, “in which 
you catch various fish ;” while trade over the flats and by the 
dull streams, is widely possible. Of the Ascanien race, the 
notablest is Otto with the Arrow, whose story see, pp. 138- 
141 (98-100), noting that Otto is one of the first Minnesing- 
ers ; that, being a prisoner to the Archbishop of Magdeburg, 
his wife rescues him, selling her jewels to bribe the canons ; 
and that the Knight, set free on parole and promise of farther 
ransom, rides back with his own price in his hand; holding 
himself thereat cheaply bought, though no angelic legerde- 
main happens to the scales now. His own estimate of his 
price—‘‘ Rain gold ducats on my war-horse and me, till you 
cannot see the point of my spear atop.” 

Emptiness of utter pride, you think? 

Not so. Consider with yourself, reader, how much you 
dare to say, aloud, you are worth. If you have no courage to 
name any price whatsoever for yourself, believe me, the 
_ cause is not your modesty, but that in very truth you feel in 
your heart there would be no bid for you at Lucian’s sale of 
lives, were that again possible, at Christie and Manson’s. 

Finally (1319 exactly ; say 1320, for memory), the Ascanien 
line expired in Brandenburg, and the little town and its 
electorate lapsed to the Kaiser: meantime other economical 
arrangements had been in progress ; but observe first how far 
we have got. 


444 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


The Fowler, St. Adalbert and the Bear have established 
order, and some sort of Christianity; but the established 
persons begin to think somewhat too well of themselves. On 
quite honest terms, a dead saint or a living knight ought to 
be worth their true “ weight in gold.” But a pyramid, with 
only the point of the spear seen at top, would be many times 
over one’s weight in gold. And although men were yet far 
enough from the notion of modern days, that the gold is 
better than the flesh, and from buying it with the clay of 
one’s body, and even the fire of one’s soul, instead of soul 
and body with it, they were beginning to fight for their own 
supremacy, or for their own religious fancies, and not at all 
to any useful end, until an entirely unexpected movement is 
made in the old useful direction forsooth, only by some 
kind ship-captains of Liibeck! 


VI. 


1210-1320.—Civil work, aiding military, during the Ascanien 
period. 


Vol. I, Book II. Chap. vi. p. 109 (77). 


Ty the year 1190, Acre not yet taken, and the crusading army 
wasting by murrain on the shore, the German soldiers es- 
pecially having none to look after them, certain compassion- 
ate ship-captains of Liibeck, one Walpot von Bassenheim tak- 
ing the lead, formed themselves into an union for succor of 
the sick and the dying, set up canvas tents from the Liibeck 
ship stores, and did what utmost was in them silently in the 
name of mercy and heaven. Finding its work prosper, the 
little medicinal and weather-fending company took vows on 
itself, strict chivalry forms, and decided to become permanent 
* Knights Hospitallers of our dear Lady of Mount Zion,” 
separate from the former Knights Hospitallers, as being en- 
tirely German: yet soon, as the German Order of St. Mary, 
eclipsing in importance Templars, Hospitallers, and every 
other chivalric order then extant; no purpose of battle in 
them, but much strength for it; their purpose only the help- 


POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 445 


ing of German pilgrims. To this only they are bound by 
their vow, “geliibde,” and become one of the usefullest of 
clubs in all the Pall Mall of Europe. 

Finding pilgrimage in Palestine falling slack, and more 
need for them on the homeward side of the sea, their Hoch- 
meister, Hermann of the Salza, goes over to Venice in 1210. 
There the titular bishop of still unconverted Preussen advises 
him of that field of work for his idle knights. Hermann 
thinks well of it: sets his St. Mary’s riders at Triglaph, with 
the sword in one hand and a missal in the other. 

Not your-modern way of affecting conversion! ‘Too illib- 
eral, you think ; and what would Mr. J. S. Mill say? 

But if Triglaph had been verily ‘three whales’ cubs 
combined by boiling,” you would yourself have promoted 
attack upon him for the sake of his oil, would not you? The 
Teutsch Ritters, fighting him for charity, are they so much 
inferior to you? 


They built, and burnt, innumerable stockades for and 
against; built wooden forts which are now stone towns. They 
fought much and prevalently ; galloped desperately to and fro, 
ever.on the alert. In peaceabler ulterior times, they fenced 
in the Nogat and the Weichsel with dams, whereby unlimited 
quagmire might become grassy meadow—as it continues to 
this day. Marienburg (Mary’s Burg), with its grand stone 
Schloss still visible and even habitable: this was at length 
their headquarter. But how many Burges of wood and stone 
they built, in different parts ; what revolis, surprisals, furious 
fights in woody, boggy places they had, no man has counted. 

But always some preaching by zealous monks, accompanied 
the chivalrous fighting. And colonists came in from Germany ; 
trickling in, or at times streaming. Victorious Ritterdom 
offers terms to the beaten heathen: terms not of tolerant 
nature, but which will be punctually kept by Ritierdom. When 
the flame of revolt or general conspiracy burnt up again too 
extensively, high personages came on crusade to them. Otto- 
ear, King of Bohemia, with his extensive far-shining chivalry, 
* conquered Samland in a month ;” tore up the Romova where 
Adalbert had been massacred, and burned it from the face of 
the earth. A certain fortress was founded at that time, in 
Ottocar’s presence ; and in honor of him they named it King’s 


446 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


Fortress, ‘“ Kénigsberg.” Among King Ottocar’s esquires, 
or subaltern junior officials, on this occasion, is one Rudolf, 
heir of a poor Swiss lordship and gray hill castle, called 
Hapsburg, rather in reduced circumstances, whom Ottocar 
likes for his prudent, hardy ways; a stout, modest, wise 
young man, who may chance to redeem Hapsburg a little, if 
he lives. 

Conversion, and complete conquest once come, there was a 
happy time for Prussia; ploughshare instead of sword: busy 
sea-havens, German towns, getting built ; churches everywhere 
rising ; grass growing, and peaceable cows, where formerly had 
been quagmire and snakes, and for the Order a happy time. 
On the whole, this Teutsch Ritterdom, for the first century 
and more, was agrand phenomenon, and flamed like a bright 
blessed beacon through the night of things, in those Northern 
countries, For above a century, we perceive, it was the rally- 
ing place of all brave men who had a career to seek on terms 
other than vulgar. The noble soul, aiming beyond money, 
and sensible to more than hunger in this world, had a beacon 
burning (as we say), if the night chanced to overtake it, and 
the earth to grow too intricate, as is not uncommon. Bet- 
ter than the career of stump-oratory, I should fancy, and its 
Hesperides apples, golden, and of gilt horse-dung. Better than 
puddling away one’s poor spiritual gift of God (loan, not gift), 
such as it may be, in building the lofty rhyme, the lofty re- 
view article, fora discerning public that has sixpence to spare ! 
Times alter greatly.* 


We must pause here again for a moment to think where we 
are, and whois with us. The Teutsch Ritters have been fight- 
ing, independently of all states, for their own hand, or St. 
Adalbert’s; partly for mere love of fight, partly for love of 
order, partly for love of God. Meantime, other Riders have 
been fighting wholly for what they could get by it; and other 
persons, not Riders, have not been fighting at all, but in their 
own towns peacefully manufacturing and selling. 

Of Henry the Fowler’s Marches, Austria has become a mili- 
tary power, Flanders a mercantile one, pious only in the degree 
consistent with their several occupations. Prussia is now a 

*I would much rather print these passages of Carlyle in large golden 


letters than small black ones; but they are only here at all for unlucky 
people who cant read them with the context. 


POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 447 


practical and farming country, more Christian than its longer- 
converted neighbors. 


Towns are built, Konigsberg (King Ottocar’s town), Thoren 
(Thorn, City of the Gates), with many others ; so that the wild 
population and the tame now lived tolerably together, under 
Gospel and Liibeck law ; and all was ploughing and trading. 


But Brandenburg itself, what of it? 

The Ascanien Markeraves rule it on the whole prosperously 
down to 1320, when their line expires, and it falls into the 
power of Imperial Austria. 


IX. 
1320-1415.—Brandenburg under the Austrians. 


A century—the fourteenth—of miserable anarchy and de- 
cline for Brandenburg, its Kurfiirsts, in deadly succession, 
making what they can out of it for their own pockets. The 
city itself and its territory utterly helpless. Read pp. 180, 151 
(129, 130). ‘The towns suffered much, any trade they might 
have had going to wreck. Robber castles flourished, all else 
decayed, no highway safe. What are Hamburg pedlars made 
for but to be robbed ?” 


X. 
1415-1440.—Brandenburg under Friedrich of Niiremberg. 


Tus is the fourth of the men whom you are to remember as 
creators of the Prussian monarchy, Henry the Fowler, St. 
Adalbert, Albert the Bear, of Ascanien, and Friedrich of Nii- 
remberg ; (of Hohenzollern, by name, and by country, of the 
Black Forest, north of the Lake of Constance), 

Brandenburg is sold to him at Constance, during the great 
Council, for about 200,0002 of our money, worth perhaps 
a million in that day; still, with its capabilities, “dog 
cheap.” Admitting, what no one at the time denied, the gen- 


448 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


eral marketableness of states as private property, this is the 
one practical result, thinks Carlyle (not likely to think 
wrong), of that cecumenical deliberation, four years long, of 
the ‘elixir of the intellect and dignity of Europe. And the 
one thing was not its doing; but a pawnbroking job, inter- 
calated,” putting, however, at last, Brandenburg again under 
the will of one strong man. On St. John’s day, 1412, he first 
set foot in his town, ‘‘and Brandenburg, under its wise Kur- 
first, begins to be cosmic again.” The story of Heavy Peg, 
pages 195-198 (138, 140), is one of the most brilliant and im- 
portant passages of the first volume ; page 199, specially to 
our purpose, must be given entire :— 


The offer to be Kaiser was made him in his old days; but 
he wisely declined that too. It was in Brandenburg, by 
what he silently founded there, that he did his chief benefit 
to Germany and mankind. He understood the noble art of 
governing men; had in him the justness, clearness, valor, 
and patience needed for that. A man of sterling probity, for 
one thing. Which indeed is the first requisite in said art :—if 
you will have your laws obeyed without mutiny, see well that 
they be pieces of God Almighty’s law; otherwise all the ar- 
tillery in the world will not keep down mutiny. 

Friedrich ‘travelled much over Brandenburg ;” looking 
into everything with his own eyes; making, I can well faney, 
innumerable crooked things straight; reducing more and 
more that famishing dog-kennel of a Brandenburg into a 
fruitful arable field. His portraits represent a square-headed, 
mild-looking, solid gentleman, witha certain twinkle of mirth 
in the serious eyesof him. Except in those Hussite wars for 
Kaiser Sigismund and the Reich, in which no man could pros- 
per, he may be defined as constantly prosperous. To Bran- 
denburg he was, very literally, the blessing of blessings; re- 
demption out of death into life. In the ruins of that old 
Friesack Castle, battered down by Heavy Peg, antiquarian 
science (if it had any eyes) might look for the taproot of the 
Prussian nation, and the beginning of all that Brandenburg 
has since grown to under the sun. 


Which growth is now traced by Carlyle in its various bud- 
ding and withering, under the succession of the twelve Elec- 


POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 449 


tors, of whom Friedrich, with his heavy Peg, is first, and 
Friedrich, first King of Prussia, grandfather of Friedrich the 
Great, the twelfth. 


XI. 
1415-1701.— Brandenburg under the Hohenzollern Kurfirsts, 


Book III. 


Wuo the Hohenzollerns were, and how they came to power 
in Niiremberg, is told in Chap. v. of Book II. 

Their succession in Brandenburg is given in brief at page 
377 (269). I copy it, in absolute barrenness of enumeration, 
for our momentary convenience, here : 


Friedrich 1st of Brandenburg (6th of BisSH DEE)» . 1412-1440 


Friedrich IJ., called ‘‘ Iron Teeth,”’ _ . 1440-1472 
Albert, . ‘ : ‘ : ‘ ; 4 . 1472-1486 
Johann, . . 4 ‘ : ‘ : - . 1486-1499 
JoachimI., . : ; : : ; ; . 1499-1535 
Joachim Il, . ; ; ' 4 / ‘ . 1585-1571 
Johann George, ; ; ‘ “ ake: . 1571-1598 
Joachim Friedrich, . ; ; F : ; . 1598-1608 
Johann Sigismund, . : F ; ; . 1608-1619 
George Wilhelm, . : . 1619-1640 
Friedrich Wilhelm (the Groat rapa Whe : A . 1640-1688 
Friedrich, first King; crowned 18th January, Poo 


Of this line of princes we have to say they followed gener- 
ally in their ancestor’s steps, and had success of the like kind 
more or less ; Hohenzollerns all of them, by character and be- 
haviour as well as by descent. No lack of quiet energy, of 
thrift, sound sense. There was likewise solid fair-play in 
general, no founding of yourself on ground that will not 
earry, and there was instant, gentle, but inexorable crushing of 
mutiny, if it showed itself, which after the Second Elector, or 
at most the Third, it had altogether ceased to do. 

This is the general account of them; of special matters 
note the following :— 

Il. Friedrich, called ‘‘Iron-teeth,” from his firmness, proves 


450 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


a notable manager and governor. Builds the palace at. Ber- 
lin in its first form, and makes it his chief residence. Buys 
Neumark from the fallen Teutsch Ritters, and generally es- 
tablishes things on securer footing. 

III. Albert, ‘‘a fiery, tough old Gentlemen,” called the 
Achilles of Germany in his day; has half-a-century of fight- 
ing with his own Niirembergers, with Bavaria, France, Bur- 
eundy, and its fiery Charles, besides being head constable to 
the Kaiser among any disorderly persons in the East. His 
skull, long shown on his tomb, “‘marvellous for strength and 
with no visible sutures.” 

IV. John, the orator of his race; (but the orations unre- 
corded). His second son, Archbishop of Maintz, for whose 
piece of memorable work see page 223 (143) and read in con- 
nection with that the history of Margraf George, pp. 237- 
241 (152-154), and the 8th chapter of the third book. 

V. Joachim L., of little note; thinks there has been enough 
Reformation, and checks proceedings in a dull stubbornness, 
causing him at least grave domestic difficulties—Page 271 
(173). 

VI. Joachim Il. Again active in the Reformation, and 
staunch, 


though generally in a cautious, weighty, never in a rash, 
swift way, to the great cause of Protestantism and to all 
good causes. He was himself a solemnly devout man; deep, 
awe-stricken reverence dwelling in his view of this universe. 
Most serious, though with a jocose dialect, commonly having 
a cheerful wit in speaking to men. Luther’s books he ealled 
his Seelenschatz, (soul’s treasure) ; Luther and the Bible were 
his chief reading. ond of profane learning, too, and of the 
_useful or ornamental arts; given to music, and “would him- 
self sing aloud ” when he had a melodious leisure hour. 


VIL. Johann George, a prudent thrifty Herr; no mistresses, 
no luxuries allowed; at the sight of a new-fashioned coat 
he would fly out on an unhappy youth and pack him from 
his presence. Very strict in point of justice ; a peasant once 
appealing to him in one of his inspection journeys through 
the country— 


POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 451 


“Grant me justice, Durchlaucht, against so and so; Iam 
your Highness’s born subject.” ‘Thou shouldst have it, man, 
wert thou a born Turk!” answered Johann George. 


Thus, generally, we find this line of Electors representing 
in Europe the Puritan mind of England in a somewhat duller, 
but less dangerous, form; receiving what Protestantism 
could teach of honesty and common sense, but not its anti- 
Catholic fury, or its selfish spiritual anxiety. Pardon of sins 
is not to be had from Tetzel; neither, the Hohenzollern mind 
advises with itself, from even Tetzel’s master, for either the 
buying, or the asking. On the whole, we had better commit 
as few as possible, and live just lives and plain ones. 


A conspicuous thrift, veracity, modest solidity, looks through 
the conduct of this Herr; a determined Protestant he too, as 
indeed all the following were and are. 


VIL. Joachim Friedrich. Gets hold of Prussia, which 
hitherto, you observe, has always been spoken of as a separate 
country from Brandenburg. March 11, 1605—“ squeezed his 
way into the actual guardianship of Preussen and its imbe- 
cile Duke, which was his by right.” 

For my own part, 1 do not trouble myself much about 
these rights, never being able to make out any single one, to 
begin with, except the right to keep everything and every 
place about you in as good order as you can—Prussia, Po- 
land, or what else. I should much like, for instance, just 
now, to hear of any honest Cornish gentleman of the old 
Drake breed taking a fancy to land in Spain, and trying what 
he could make of his rights as far round Gibraltar as he 
could enforce them. At all events, Master Joachim has some- 
how got hold of Prussia ; and means to keep it. 

IX. Johann Sigismund. Only notable for our economical 
purposes, as getting the “ guardianship ” of Prussia confirmed 
to him. The story at page 317 (226), “a strong flame of 
choler,” indicates a new order of things among the knights of 
Kurope—“ princely etiquettes melting all into smoke.” Too 


452 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


literally so, that being one of the calamitous functions of the 
plain lives we are living, and of the busy life our country is 
living. In the Duchy of Cleve, especially, concerning which 
legal dispute begins in Sigismund’s time. And it is well 
worth the lawyers’ trouble, it seems. 


It amounted, perhaps, to two Yorkshires in extent. A nat- 
urally opulent country of fertile meadows, shipping capabili- 
ties, metalliferous hills, and at this time, in consequence of 
the Dutch-Spanish war, and the multitude of Protestant ref- 
ugees, it was getting filled with ingenious industries, and 
rising to be what it still is, the busiest quarter of Germany. 
A country lowing with kine; the hum of the flax-spindle 
heard in its cottages in those old days—‘‘much of the linen 
called Hollands is made in Jiilich, and only bleached, 
stamped, and sold by the Dutch,” says Biisching. A country 
in our days which is shrouded at short intervals with the due 
canopy of coal-smoke, and loud with sounds of the anvil and 
the loom. 


The lawyers took two hundred and six years to settle the 
question concerning this Duchy, and the thing Johann Sigis- 
mund had claimed legally in 1609 was actually handed over 
to Johann Sigismund’s descendant in the seventh generation. 
“These litigated duchies are now the Prussian provinces, 
Jiilich, Berg, Cleve, and the nucleus. of Prussia’s possessions 
in the Rhine country.” 

X. George Wilhelm. Read pp. 325 to 327 (231, 233) on 
this Elector and German Protestantism, now fallen cold, and 
somewhat too little dangerous. But George Wilhelm is the 
only weak prince of all the twelve. For another example 
how the heart and life of a country depend upon its prince, 
not on its council, read this, of Gustavus Adolphus, demand- 
ing the cession of Spandau and Kiistrin : 


Which cession Kurfiirst George Wilhelm, though giving 
all his prayers to the good cause, could by no means grant. 
Gustav had to insist, with more and more emphasis, advanc- 
ing at last with military menace upon Berlin itself. He was 


POLITICAL HOONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 453 


met by George Wilhelm and his Council, “in the woods of 
Ciépenick,” short way to the east of that city; there George 
Wilhelm and his Council wandered about, sending messages, 
hopelessly consulting, saying among each other, ‘Que faire ? 
ils ont des canons.” For many hours so, round the inflexible 
Gustav, who was there like a fixed mile-stone, and to all 
questions and comers had only one answer. 


On our special question of war and its consequences, read 
this of the Thirty Years’ one: 


But on the whole, the grand weapon in it, and towards the 
latter times, the exclusive one, was hunger. ‘The opposing 
armies tried to starve one another; at lowest, tried each not 
to starve. Each trying to eat the country or, at any rate, to 
leave nothing eatable in it; what that will mean for the 
country we may consider. As the armies too frequently, and 
the Kaiser’s armies habitually, lived without commissariat, 
often enough without pay, all horrors of war and of being a 
seat of war, that have been since heard of, are poor to those 
then practised, the detail of which is still horrible to read. 
Germany, in all eatable quarters of it, had to undergo the 
process ; tortured, torn to pieces, wrecked, and brayed as in 
a mortar, under the iron mace of war. Brandenburg saw its 
towns seized and sacked, its country populations driven to 
despair by the one party and the other. Three times—first 
in the Wallenstein-Mecklenburg times, while fire and sword 
were the weapons, and again, twice over, in the ultimate 
stages of the struggle, when starvation had become the 
method—Brandenburg fell to be the principal theatre of con- 
flict, where all forms of the dismal were at their height. In 
1638, three years after that precious “Peace of Prag,” 
{ the ravages of the starving Gallas and his Imperial- 
ists excelled all precedent, . . . men ate human flesh, 
nay, human creatures ate their own children. ‘‘ Que faire? 
ils ont des canons! ” 


“We have now arrived at the lowest nadir point” (says 
Carlyle) “of the history of Brandenburg under the Hohen- 
zollerns.” Is this then all that Heavy Peg and our nine 
Kurfiirsts have done for us? 


454 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


Carlyle does not mean that ; but even he, greatest of his- 
torians since Tacitus, is not enough careful to mark for us 
the growth of national character, as distinct from the pros- 
perity of dynasties. 

A republican historian would think of this devyelop- 
ment only, and suppose it to be possible without any dy- 
nasties. | 

Which is indeed in a measure so, and the work now chiefly 
needed in moral philosophy, as well as history, is an analysis 
of the constant and prevalent, yet unthought of, influences, 
which, without any external help from kings, and in a silent 
and entirely necessary manner, form, in Sweden, in Bava- 
ria, in the Tyrol, in the Scottish border, and on the French 
sea-coast, races of noble peasants; pacific, poetic, heroic, 
Christian-hearted in the deepest sense, who may indeed 
perish by sword or famine in any cruel thirty years’ war, or 
ignoble thirty years’ peace, and yet leave such strength to 
their children that the country, apparently ravaged into hope- 
less ruin, revives, under any prudent king, as the cultivated 
fields do under the spring rain. How the rock to which no 
seed can cling, and which no rain can soften, is subdued into 
the good ground which can bring forth its hundredfold, we 
forget to watch, while we follow the footsteps of the sower, 
or mourn the catastrophes of storm. All this while, the 
Prussian earth—the Prussian soul—has been thus dealt 
upon by successive fate ; and now, though laid, as it seems, 
utterly desolate, it can be revived by a few years of wisdom 
and of peace. 

Vol. I. Book If. Chap. xviii.i—The Great Elector, Fried- 
rich Wilhelm. LEHleventh of the dynasty :— 


There hardly ever came to sovereign power a young man 
of twenty under more distressing, hopeless-looking cireum- 
stances. Political significance Brandenburg had none; a 
mere Protestant appendage, dragged about by a Papist Kai- 
ser. His father’s Prime Minister, as we have seen, was in the 
interest of his enemies; not Brandenbureg’s servant, but 
Austria’s. The very commandants of his fortresses, Com- 
mandant of Spandau more especially, refused to obey Fried- 


POLITICAL HCONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 455 


rich Wilhelm on his accession ; ‘were bound to obey the 
Kaiser in the first place.” 

For twenty years past Brandenburg had been scoured by 
hostile armies, which, especially the Kaiser’s part of which, 
committed outrages new in human history. In a year or two 
hence, Brandenburg became again the theatre of business, 
Austrian Gallas advancing thither again (1644) with intent 
“to shut up Torstenson and his Swedes in Jutland.” Gallas 
could by no means do what he intended; on the contrary, 
he had to run from Torstenson—what feet could do; was 
hunted, he and his Merode Briider (beautiful inventors of 
the “marauding” art), till they pretty much all died (cre- 
pirten) says Kohler. No great loss to society, the death of 
these artists, but we can fancy what their life, and especially 
what the process of their dying, may have cost poor Branden- 
burg again ! 

Friedrich Wilhelm’s aim, in this as in other emergencies, 
was sun-clear to himself, but for most part dim to everybody 
else. He had to walk very warily, Sweden on one hand of him, 
suspicious Kaiser on the other: he had to wear semblances, 
to be ready with evasive words, and advance noiselessly by 
many circuits. More delicate operation could not be imag- 
ined. But advance he did; advance and arrive. With ex- 
traordinary talent, diligence, and felicity the young man 
wound himself out of this first fatal position, got those foreign 
armies pushed out of his country, and kept them out. His 
first concern had been to find some vestige of revenue, to put 
that upon a clear footing, and by loans or otherwise to scrape 
a little ready-money together. On the strength of which a 
small body of soldiers could be collected about him, and drilled 
into real ability to fight and obey. This as a basis: on this 
followed all manner of things, freedom from Swedish-Austrian 
invasions, as the first thing. He was himself, as appeared 
by-and-by, a fighter of the first quality, when it came to that ; 
but never was willing to fight if he could help it. Preferred 
rather to shift, manceuvre, and negotiate, which he did in 
most vigilant, adroit, and masterly manner. But by degrees 
he had grown to have, and could maintain it,an army of 
twenty-four thousand men, among the best troops then in 
being. 


To wear semblances, to be ready with evasive words, how is 
this, Mr. Carlyle? thinks perhaps the rightly thoughtful reader. 


456 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


Yes, such things have to be. There are lies and lies, and 
there are truths and truths. Ulysses cannot ride on the 
ram’s back, ike Phryxus; but must ride under his belly. 
Read also this, presently following : 


Shortly after which, Friedrich Wilhelm, who had shone 
much in the battle of Warsaw, into which he was dragged 
against his will, changed sides. An inconsistent, treacherous 
man? Perhaps not, O reader! perhaps a man advancing ‘in 
circuits,” the only way he has ; spirally, face now to east, now 
to west, with his own reasonable private aim sun- clear to 
him all the while ? 


The battle of Warsaw, three days long, fought with Gus- 
tavus, the grandfather of Charles XI, against the Poles, vir- 
tually ends the Polish power: : 


Old Johann Casimir, not long after that peace of Oliva, 
getting tired of his unruly Polish chivalry and their ways, 
abdicated—retired to Paris, and ‘‘and lived much with Ninon 
de l’Enclos and her circle,” for the rest of his life. He used 
to complain of his Polish chivalry, that there was no solidity 
in them ; nothing but outside glitter, with tumult and anar- 
chic noise; fatal want of one essential talent, the talent of 
obeying ; and has been heard to prophesy that a glorious 
Republic, persisting in such courses, would arrive at results 
which would surprise it. 

Onward from this time, Friedrich Wilhelm figures in the 
world ; public men watching his procedure ; kings anxious 
to secure him—Dutch print-sellers sticking up his portraits 
for a hero-worshipping public. Fighting hero, had the pub- 
lic known it, was not his essential character, though he had 
to fight a great deal. He was essentially an industrial man ; 
er eat in organizing, regulating, in constraining chaotic heaps 
to become cosmic for him. He drains bogs, settles colonies 
in the waste places of his dominions, cuts canals; unwea- 
riedly encourages trade and work. The Friedrich Wilhelm’s 
Canal, which still carries tonnage from the Oder to the Spree, 
is a monument of his zeal in this way; creditable with the 
means he had. ‘To the poor French Protestants in the Edict- 
of-Nantes affair, he was like an express benefit of Heaven ; 
one helper appointed to whom the help itself was profit- 


POLITICAL EHCONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 457 


able. He munificently welcomed them to Brandenburg ; 
showed really a noble piety and human pity, as well as judeg- 
ment ; nor did Brandenburg and he want their reward. Some 
twenty thousand nimble French souls, evidently of the best 
French quality, found a home there; made “ waste sands 
about Berlin into potherb gardens ;” and in spiritual Bran- 
denburg, too, did something of horticulture which is still 
noticeable. 


Now read carefully the description of the man, p. 352 
(224-5); the story of the battle of Fehrbellin, ‘‘ the Mara- 
thon of Brandenburg,” p. 354 (225); and of the winter cam- 
paign of 1679, p. 356 (227), beginning with its week’s 
marches at sixty miles aday ; his wife, as always, being with 
him : 


Louisa, honest and loving Dutch girl, aunt to our William 
of Orange, who trimmed up her own “ Orange-burg ” (coun- 
try-house), twenty miles north of Berlin, into a little jewel of 
the Dutch type, potherb gardens, training-schools for young 
girls, and the like, a favorite abode of hers when she was at 
liberty for recreation. But her life was busy and earnest ; 
she was helpmate, not in name only, to an ever busy man. 
They were married young ; a marriage oflove withal. Young 
Friedrich Wilbelm’s courtship; wedding in Holland; the 
honest, trustful walk and conversation of the two sovereign 
spouses, their journeyings together, their mutual hopes, fears, 
and manifold vicissitudes, till death, with stern beauty, shut 
it in; all is human, true, and wholesome in it, interesting to 
look upon, and rare among sovereign persons. 


Louisa died in 1667, twenty-one years before her husband, 
who married again— (little to his contentment)—died in 1688 ; 
and Louisa’s second son, Friedrich, ten years old at his 
mother’s death, and now therefore thirty-one, succeeds, be- 
coming afterwards Friedrich I. of Prussia. 

And here we pause on two great questions. Prussia is 
assuredly at this point a happier and better country than it 
was, when inhabited by Wends. But is Friedrich I. a hap- 
pier and better man than Henry the Fowler? Have all these 
kings thus improved their country, but never themselves ? 


458 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 


Is this somewhat expensive and ambitious Herr, Friedrich I. 
buttoned in diamonds, indeed the best that Protestantism 
can produce, as against Fowlers, Bears, and Red Beards? 
Much more, Friedrich Wilhelm, orthodox on predestination ; 
most of all, his less orthodox son ;—have we, in these, the 
highest results which Dr. Martin Luther can produce for the 
present, in the first circles of society? And if not, how is it 
that the country, having gained so much in intelligence and 
strength, lies more passively in their power than the baser 
country did under that of nobler men? 

These, and collateral questions, I mean to work out as I 
can, with Carlyle’s good help ;—but must pause for this time ; 
in doubt, as heretofore. Only of this one thing I doubt not, 
that the name of all great kings, set over Christian nations, 
must at last be, in fufilment, the hereditary one of these 
German princes, “ Rich in Peace ;” and that their coronation 
will be with Wild olive, not with gold. 


‘EHE 
eemtes: OF THE DUST 


TEN LECTURES 


LITTLE HOUSEWIVES 


ON 


THE ELEMENTS OF CRYSTALLISATION 







Podee, | . » oH tie “piend 
3 pe itd » ge Mubepas, oF Bi 
Bley aE EN sig bt Ee lnae, Laie ag 
f fi, bet j2or bedbep pei wed yok 
Pe ke sty e : gate Ui) 
ea. +z 2 facet fs nee ee? aeegetie g r 
Ce Ligeti a eae oe if ech . 
(tis, Foose ey ore: 7 x 
ivy iA @oeee tives, hire m 
Bo.N¢ val § we ai ” 
; A nnd ; 
Bernas | awh 1a 
eCInUT. sat ua 
i ViWaek ic WY ATT 
. RY 
abt MOLTAZLIIA Taye ie era 


CONTENTS. 


ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
LECTURE?TI. PAGE 
THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS . : : ° é Ir 


LECTURE I. 


THE PYRAMID BUILDERS r : - é ’ qt BY 


LECTURE III. 


THE CRYSTAL LIFE ; ; ; : ° & 31 
LECTURE IV. 

THE CRYSTAL ORDERS : y . ° e on "43 
LECTURE V. 

CRYSTAL VIRTUES : ; : : . . 56 
Brash URE Vi. 

CRYSTAL QUARRELS . : ‘ . ° . + *90 


LECTURE VII. 


HOME VIRTUES ; ‘i ‘ ; ? ‘ 82 


LECTURE VIII. 


CRYSTAL CAPRICE . ; ; ‘ . . ear: 


LECTURE IX. 


CRYSTAL SORROWS , : : ; : ‘ III 
LECTURE xX. 

THE CRYSTAL REST . : ; ‘ ‘ . a! 325 

NOTES . : . . : : : . 143 

FICTION—FAIR AND Fou. ; ; 4 . ‘ 153 


ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


LETTER I. 

On First PRACTICE . : . : . . + 233 
LETTER II. 

SKETCHING FROM NATURE : ‘ : : : 293 
LETTER III. 

On COLOUR AND COMPOSITION . . . : + 331 


APPENDIX: THINGS TO BE STUDIED . : : : 403 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 


ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


FIGURE 


I. 


3 


SQUARES 

GRADATED SPACES 

OUTLINE OF LETTER 

OUTLINE OF BOUGH OF TREE. 
CHARRED LoG 

SHOOT OF LILAC 

LEAF 

BOuGH OF PHILLYREA . : ‘ : ‘ 
SPRAY OF PHILLYREA 

TRUNK OF TREE, BY TITIAN 
SKETCH FROM RAPHAEL 
OUTLINES OF A BALL 


Woopcur OF DURER’S 


14, 15, 16. MASSES OF LEAVES 


17, 18, 19. CURVATURES IN LEAVES 


20. 


21. 


22. 


FROM AN ETCHING, by Turner . 
ALPINE BRIDGE : ; ; 


ALPINE BRIDGE AS IT APPEARS AT VARIOUS DISTANCES 


PAGE 


290, 


295) 


237 
241 
245 
248 
257 
272 
274 
275 
276 
284 
285 
287 
289 
291 
296 
297 
3°7 
308 


FIGURE PAGE 


23. OUTLINES EXPRESSIVE OF FOLIAGE , : : 314 
24. SHOOT OF SPANISH CHESTNUT . . . 315 
25. YOUNG SHOOT OF OAK : , é . ‘ 316 
26, 27, 28. WoopcurTs AFTER TITIAN : . e 321, 322 
29. DIAGRAM OF WINDOW . : : . 339 
30. Swiss COTTAGE . : : ; : . ec 35$ 
31. GROUPS OF LEAVES . : ; * : : 359 
32. PAINTING, by Turner : ; d . « 361 
33. SKETCH ON CALAIS SANDs, by Turner ‘ ; . 365 
34. DRAWING OF AN IDEAL BRIDGE, by Turner . : » 369 
35. PROFILE OF THE TOWERS OF EHRENBREITSTEIN . a2) 370 
36s .CURVES .. , : ° ° ‘ . ¢. g7t 
37) 38) 39. CURVES FOUND IN LEAVES: . : : : 372 
40. OUTLINES OF A TREE TRUNK , : ‘ : - 373 
41-44. TREE RADIATION . . ; - > 374, 375 
45,46. WoopcuTs oF LEAF ; ° : : « 376 
47. LEAF OF COLUMBINE : ° ° : . 378 


48. Top oF AN OLD TowER. ° . ° « 385 


PERSON 4. 


OLD LECTURER (of incalculable age) 
FLORRIE, on astronomical evidence presumed to be aged 9, 


ISABEL F ‘ ° : : ¥ : eee LL, 
May . : ; : ° : ; ; : a eae 
Day. ‘ : . . : : : : Pate 
KATHLEEN . : . ‘ ‘ : 7 , ee ea: 
LUCILLA . ° ° : : . : * a oe TERS 
VIOLET : : : : Se was |S 
Dora (who has the keys gad is Bokeskoopa P rag ya He 
HayPt (so called from her dark eyes) . : Aa a 
JESSIE (who somehow always makes the room Nook 

brighter when she is in it) . Rea 18, 


Mary (of whom everybody, Saaleding the old Bent 
turer, is in great awe) . . * ; ° Re bee ty 


. oP ie a 1,07 ae. | - 
Le se a Bs se hey 
* ih tal . rr ps v J. 
ae : 2 Ce x a: an 
, > th 
| ; P ts Sy 
><) 
= ory : 
= +3 iv - 
. é 
? An 
wes 
ep? 
wey 
nee 4 
. Pe 8 
2 FREY ra 5 Pwr : a) 
ee ray! 
¢ oe 
_ ak) wk SAE ee » ey 
are 
) (> Ps 
ee Py ~ wt i. “a te ite 
: ie 
"> f., 
_ W LS) 4 “vag as LS 
4 ‘ a} Vi {at i. 


& 


bres Sah he heeereia omminn. - 


7 


ees eagiptennednk beiealbae 
deal ‘mbes wah eodinos euswia 


pt yee edd “uitaloan % 


* 
t 
a > 
* . * 
7 < Lev OR 
= > a 


at 


+ 
od 
aa Aas 


»~ 


4 
— 
oo 


o2 ee Eh: BE 


fete Wid alot Seah 4a 


- a é - 
¥ 1 
ad a ‘ O ‘a" oe 
ES + .0GNES s wel Oe 
° 4 , . . <@ 
ros q 
* d a? yk 





via yee ae 
an me 


We z On 


PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 


1 HAVE seldom been more disappointed by the result of my 
best .pains given to any of my books, than by the earnest 
request of my publisher, after the opinion of the public had 
been taken on the ‘ Ethics of the Dust,’ that I would “ write 
no more in dialogue!” However, I bowed to public judg- 
ment in this matter at once, (knowing also my inventive 
powers to be of the feeblest,) ; but in reprinting the book, 
(at the prevailing request of my kind friend, Mr. Henry Wil- 
lett,) I would pray the readers whom it may at first offend by 
its disconnected method, to examine, nevertheless, with care, 
the passages in which the principal speaker sums the conclu- 
sions of any dialogue: for these summaries were written as 
introductions, for young people, to all that I have said on the 
same matters in my larger books; and, on re-reading them, 
they satisfy me better, and seem to me calculated to be more 
generally useful, than anything else I have done of the kind. 

The summary of the contents of the whole book, beginning, 
“You may at least earnestly believe,” at p. 130, is thus the 
clearest exposition I have ever yet given of the general con- 
ditions under which the Personal Creative Power manifests 
itself in the forms of matter ; and the analysis of heathen con- 
ceptions of Deity, beginning at p. 131, and closing at p. 138, 
not only prefaces, but very nearly supersedes, all that in more 
lengthy terms I have since asserted, or pleaded for, in ‘ Ara- 
tra Pentelici,’ and the ‘ Queen of the Air.’ 


6 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 


And thus, however the book may fail in its intention of 
suggesting new occupations or interests to its younger read- 
ers, I think it worth reprinting, in the way I have also re- 
printed ‘Unto this Last,—page for page; that the students 
of my more advanced works may be able to refer to these as 
the original documents of them ; of which the most essential 
in this book are these following. 

I. The explanation of the baseness of the avaricious func- 
tions of the Lower Pthah, p. 39, with his beetle-gospel, p. 41, 
“that a nation can stand on its vices better than on its vir- 
tues,” explains the main motive of all my books on Political 
Economy. 

ii. The examination of the connexion between stupidity 
and crime, pp. 57-62, anticipated all that I have had to urge 
in Fors Clavigera against the commonly alleged excuse for 
public wickedness,—‘“‘ They don’t mean it—they don’t know 
any better.” 

Il. The examination of the roots of Moral Power, pp. 
90-92, is a summary of what is afterwards developed with 
utmost care in my inaugural lecture at Oxford on the rela- 
tion of Art to Morals ; compare in that lecture, §§ 83-85, with 
the sentence in p. 91 of this book, ‘‘ Nothing is ever done so 
as really to please our Father, unless we would also have done 
it, though we had had no Father to know of it.” 

This sentence, however, it must be observed, regards only 
the general conditions of action in the children of God, in 
consequence of which it is foretold of them by Christ that 
they will say at the Judgment, “ When saw we thee?” It 
does not refer to the distinct cases in which virtue consists in 
faith given to command, appearing to foolish human judg- 
ment inconsistent with the Moral Law, as in the sacrifice of 
Isaac ; nor to those in which any directly-given command re- 
quires nothing more of virtue than obedience. 


PREFACE T0 THE SECOND EDITION. 4 


IV. The subsequent pages, 92-97, were written especially 
to check the dangerous impulses natural to the minds of many 
amiable young women, in the direction of narrow and selfish 
religious sentiment: and they contain, therefore, nearly 
everything which I believe it necessary that young people 
should be made to observe, respecting the errors of monastic 
life. But they in nowise enter on the reverse, or favourable 
side : of which indeed I did not, and as yet do not, feel my- 
self able to speak with any decisiveness ; the evidence on that 
side, as stated in the text, having “‘ never yet been dispassion- 
ately examined.” 

Y. The dialogue with Lucilla, beginning at p. 63, is, to 
my own fancy, the best bit of conversation in the book, and 
the issue of it, at p. 67, the most practically and immedi- 
ately useful. For on the idea of the inevitable weakness and 
corruption of human nature, has logically followed, in our 
daily life, the horrible creed of modern “ Social science,” that 
all social action must be scientifically founded on vicious im- 
pulses. But on the habit of measuring and reverencing our 
powers and talents that we may kindly use them, will be 
founded a true Social science, developing, by the employ- 
ment of them, all the real powers and honourable feelings of 
the race. 

VI. Finally, the account given in the second and third lect- 
ures, of the real nature and marvellousness of the laws of 
crystallization, is necessary to the understanding of what 
farther teaching of the beauty of inorganic form I may be 
able to give, either in ‘ Deucalion,’ or in my ‘ Elements of 
Drawing.’ I wish however that the second lecture had been 
made the beginning of the book ; and would fain now cancel 
the first altogether, which I perceive to be both obscure and 
dull. It was meant for a metaphorical description of the 
pleasures and dangers in the kingdom of Mammon, or of 


8 PREFAVE T0 THE SECOND EDITION. 


worldly wealth ; its waters mixed with blood, its fruits en- 
tangled in thickets of trouble, and poisonous when gathered ; 
and the final captivity of its inhabitants within frozen walls of 
cruelty and disdain. But the imagery is stupid and ineffec- 
tive throughout ; and I retain this chapter only because I am 
resolved to leave no room for any one to say that I have with- 
drawn, as erroneous in principle, so much as a single sentence 
of any of my books written since 1860. 

One license taken in this book, however, though often per- 
mitted to essay-writers for the relief of their dulness, I never 
mean to take more,—the relation of composed metaphor as of 
actual dream, pp. 23 and 104. I assumed, it is true, that in 
these places the supposed dream would be easily seen to be 
an invention ; but: must not any more, even under so trans- 
parent disguise, pretend to any share in the real powers of 
Vision possessed by great poets and true painters. 


BRANTWOOD: 
10th October, 1877. 


ich We OR Dp 


Te following lectures were really given, in substance, at a 
girls’ school (far in the country) ; which in the course of vari- 
ous experiments on the possibility of introducing some better 
practice of drawing into the modern scheme of female educa- 
tion, I visited frequently enough to enable the children to re- 
gard me as a friend. The lectures always fell more or less 
into the form of fragmentary answers to questions ; and they 
are allowed to retain that form, as, on the whole, likely to be 
more interesting than the symmetries of a continuous treatise. 
Many children (for the school was large) took part, at differen 
times, in the conversations ; but I have endeavoured, without 
confusedly multiplying the number of imaginary * speakers, 
to represent, as far as I could, the general tone of comment 
and enquiry among young people. : 

It will be at once seen that these Lectures were not intended 
for an introduction to mineralogy. Their purpose was merely 
to awaken in the minds of young girls, who were ready to work 
earnestly and systematically, a vital interest in the subject of 
their study. No science can be learned in play ; but itis often 
possible, in play, to bring good fruit out of past labour, or 
show sufficient reasons for the labour of the future. 

*TIdo not mean, in saying ‘imaginary,’ that I have not permitted to 
myself, in several instances, the affectionate discourtesy of some remi- 
niscence of personal character ; for which I must hope to be forgiven by 
my old pupils and their friends, as I could not otherwise have written 
the book at all. But only two sentences in all the dialogues, and the 
anecdote of ‘ Dotty,’ are literally ‘ historical.’ 


10 PREFACE. 


The narrowness of this aim does not, indeed, justify the ab. 
sence of all reference to many important principles of struct- 
ure, and many of the most interesting orders of minerals ; but 
I felt it impossible to go far into detail without illustrations ; 
and if readers find this book useful, I may, perhaps, endeavour 
to supplement it by ulustrated notes of the more interesting 
phenomena in separate groups of familiar minerals ;—flints of 
the chalk ;—agates of the basalts ;—and the fantastic and ex- 
quisitely beautiful varieties of the vein-ores of the two com- 
monest metals, lead and iron. But I have always found that 
the less we speak of our intentions, the more chance there is 
of our realizing them; and this poor little book will sufi- 
ciently have done its work, for the present, if it engages any 
of its young readers in study which may enable them to de. 
spise it for its shortcomings. 

DENMARK HILt : 

Christmas, 1865. 


THE: BCHLOS,,OF ..TELE),,DUST. 


LECTURE I. 


THH VALLEY OF DIAMONDS. 
A very idle talk, by the dining-room fire, after raisin-and-almond time. 


OLD LECTURER ; FLORRIE, ISABEL, May, Liny, and Srpyu. 


Oxtp Lecrurzr (L.). Come here, Isabel, and tell me what 
the make-believe was, this afternoon. 

IsaBEL (arranging herself very primly on the foot-stool). Such 
a dreadful one! Florrie and I were lost in the Valley of 
Diamonds. 

L. What! Sindbad’s, which nobody could get out of ? 

isanet. Yes; but Florrie and I got out of it. 

L. So I see. At least, I see you did; but are you sure 
Florrie did ? 

IsaBeL. Quite sure. 

Frorrie (putting her head round from behind L.’s sofa- 
cushion). Quite sure. (Disappears again.) 

L. I think I could be made to feel surer about it. 

(Fiori reappears, gives L. a kiss, and again exit.) 

L. I suppose it’s all right ; but how did you manage it? 

IsapeL. Well, you know, the eagle that took up Sindbad was 
very large—very, very large—the largest of all the eagles. 

L. How large were the others ? 

IsapeL. I don’t quite know—they were so far off. But this 
one was, oh, so big! and it had great wings, as wide as— 
twice over the ceiling. So, when it was picking up Sindbad, 
Florrie and I thought it wouldn’t know if we got on its back 
too: so I got up first, and then I pulled up Florrie, and we 
put our arms round its neck, and away it flew. 


12 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


L. But why did you want to get out of the valley? and 
why haven’t you brought me some diamonds? 

Isapet. It was because of the serpents. I couldn’t pick up 
even the least little bit of a diamond, I was so frightened. 

L. You should not have minded the serpents. 

Tsapet, Oh, but suppose that they had minded me? 

L. We all of us mind you a little too much, Isabel, 'm 
afraid. 

IsaseL. No—no—no, indeed. 

L. I tell you what, Isabel—I don’t believe either Sindbad, 
or Florrie, or you, ever were in the Valley of Diamonds. 

Isapet. You naughty! when I tell you we were ! 

L. Because you say you were frightened at the serpents. 

Isapen. And wouldn’t you have been? | 

L. Not at those serpents. Nobody who really goes into 
the valley is ever frightened at them—they are so beautiful. - 

IsaBeL (suddenly serious). But there’s no real Valley of Dia- 
monds, is there? 

L. Yes, Isabel; very real indeed. 

Frorriz (reappearing). Oh, where? Tell me about it. 

L. I cannot tell you a great deal about it; only I know it 
is very different from Sindbad’s. In his valley, there was 
only a diamond lying here and there ; but, in the real valley, 
there are diamonds covering the grass in showers every morn- 
ing, instead of dew: and there are clusters of trees, which 
look like lilac trees; but, in spring, all their blossoms are of 
amethyst. 

torrie. But there can’t be any serpents there, then? 

L, Why not? 

Frorriz. Because they don’t come into such beautiful 
places. 

L. I never said it was a beautiful place. 

Frorrr. What! not with diamonds strewed about it like 
dew ? 

L. That’s according to your fancy, Florrie. For myself, I 
like dew better. 

TsapeL. Oh, but the dew won’t stay ; it all dries! 

L. Yes; and it would be much nicer if the diamonds dried 


THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS. 13 


too, for the people in the valley have to sweep them off the 
grass, in heaps, whenever they want to walk on it; and then 
the heaps glitter so, they hurt one’s eyes. 

Fiorriz. Now you're just playing, you know. 

L. So are you, you know. 

Frorriz. Yes, but you mustn't play. 

L. That’s very hard, Florrie ; why mustn’t I, if you may? 

Frorrm. Oh, I may, because I’m little, but you mustn't, be- 
cause you re—(hesitates for a delicate expression of magnitude). 

L. (rudely taking the first that comes). Because I'm big? 
No; that’s not the way of it at all, Florrie. Because you're 
little, you should have very little play ; and because I’m big 
I should have a great deal. 

IsapeL and Frorrte (both). No—no—no—no. ‘That isn’t it 
at all. (Isanen sola, quoting Miss Ingelow.) ‘The lambs play 
always—they know no better.’ (Putting her head very much 
on one side.) Ah, now—please—please—tell us true; we 
want to know. 

L. But why do you want me to tell you true, any more 
than the man who wrote the ‘ Arabian Nights ?’ 

IsapeLt. Because—because we like to know about real 
things; and you can tell us, and we can’t ask the man who 
wrote the stories. 

L. What do you call real things ? 

Isanet. Now, you know! Things that really are. 

L. Whether you can see them or not? 

Isapet. Yes, if somebody else saw them. 

L. But if nobody has ever seen them ? 

Isapen (evading the point). Well, but, you know, if there 
were a real Valley of Diamonds, somebody must have seen it. 

L. You cannot be so sure of that, Isabel. Many people go 
to real places, and never see them; and many people pass 
through this valley, and never see it. 

Frorrize. What stupid people they must be! 

L. No, Florrie. They are much wiser than the people 
who do see it. 

May. I think I know where it is. 

Isapet. Tell us more about it, and then we'll guess. 


14 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


L. Well. There’s a great broad road, by a river-side, lead 
ing up into it. 

May (gravely cunning, with emphasis on the last word). 
Does the road really go up ? 

L. You think it should go down into a valley? No, it goes 
up; this is a valley among the hills, and it is as high as the 
clouds, and is often full of them ; so that even the people who 
most want to see it, cannot, always. 

Isanex. And what is the river beside the road like? 

L. It ought to be very beautiful, because it Sap] over 
diamond sand—only the water is thick and red. 

Isapet. Red water ? 

L. It isn’t all water. 

May. Oh, please never mind that, Isabel, just now ; I want 
to hear about the valley. 

L. So the entrance to it is very wide, under a steep rock ; 
only such numbers of people are always trying to get in, that 
they keep jostling each other, and manage it but slowly. 
Some weak ones are pushed back, and never get in at all; 
and make great moaning as they go away: but perhaps they 
are none the worse in the end. 

May. And when one gets in, what is it like ? 

L. It is up and down, broken kind of ground: the road 
stops directly; and there are great dark rocks, covered all 
over with wild gourds and wild vines ; the gourds, if you cut 
them, are red, with black seeds, like water-melons, and look 
ever so nice ; and the people of the place make a red pottage 
of them: but you must take care not to eat any if you ever 
want to leave the valley (though I believe putting plenty of 
meal in it makes it wholesome). Then the wild vines have 
clusters of the colour of amber ; and the people of the coun- 
try say they are the grape of Eshcol ; and sweeter than honey . 
but, indeed, if anybody else tastes them, they are like gall. 
Then there are thickets of bramble, so thorny that they would 
be cut away directly, anywhere else ; but here they are covy- 
ered with little cinque-foiled blossoms of pure silver; and, 
for berries, they have clusters of rubies. Dark rubies, which 
you only see are red after gathering them. But you may 


THis VALLEY OF DIAMONDS. 15 


fancy what blackberry parties the children have! Only they 
get their frocks and hands sadly torn. 

Lity. But rubies can’t spot one’s frocks as blackberries 
do? 

L. No; but I'll tell you what spots them—the mulberries. 
There are great forests of them, all up the hills, covered with 
silkworms, some munching the leaves so loud that it is like 
mills at work; and some spinning. But the berries are the 
blackest you ever saw; and, wherever they fall, they stain a 
deep red ; and nothing ever washes it out again. And it is 
their juice, soaking through the grass, which makes the river 
so red, because all its springs are in this wood. And the 
boughs of the trees are twisted, as if in pain, like old olive 
branches ; and their leaves are dark. And it is in these 
forests that the serpents are ; but nobody is afraid of them. 
They have fine crimson crests, and they are wreathed about 
the wild branches, one in every tree, nearly; and they are 
singing serpents, for the serpents are, in this forest, what 
birds are in ours. 

Frorrm. Ob; I don’t want to go there at all, now. 

L. You would lke it very much indeed, Florrie, if you 
were there. The serpents would not bite you ; the only fear 
would be of your turning into one! 

Frorriz. Oh, dear, but that’s worse. 

L. You wouldn’t think so if you really were turned into 
one, Florrie ; you would be very proud of your crest. And 
as long as you were yourself (not that you could get there if 
you remained quite the little Florrie you are now), you would 
like to hear the serpents sing. They hissa little through it, 
like the cicadas in Italy ; but they keep good time, and sing 
delightful melodies; and most of them have seven heads, 
with throats which each take a note of the octave; so that 
they can sing chords—it is very fine indeed. And the fire- 
flies fly round the edge of the forests all the night long ; you 
wade in fireflies, they make the fields look like a lake trem- 
bling with reflection of stars ; but you must take care not to 
touch them, for they are not like Italian fireflies, but burn, 
like real sparks. 


16 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


Frorre. I don't like it at all; Ill never go there. 

L. I hope not, Florrie ; or at least that you will get out 
again if you do. And it is very difficult to get out, for beyond 
these serpent forests there are great cliffs of dead gold, which 
form a labyrinth, winding always higher and higher, till the 
gold is all split asunder by wedges of ice ; and glaciers, welded, 
half of ice seven times frozen, and half of gold seven times 
frozen, hang down from them, and fall in thunder, cleaving 
into deadly splinters, like the Cretan arrowheads ; and into 
a mixed dust of snow and gold, ponderous, yet which the 
mountain whirlwinds are able to lift and drive in wreaths 
and pillars, hiding the paths with a burial cloud, fatal at once 
with wintry chill, and weight of golden ashes. So the wan- 
derers in the labyrinth fall, one by one, and are buried there: 
—yet, over the drifted graves, those who are spared climb to 
the last, through coil on coil of the path ;—for at the end of it 
they see the king of the valley, sitting on his throne : and be- 
side him (but it is only a false vision), spectra of creatures 
like themselves, set on thrones, from which they seem to look 
down on all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of 
them. And on the canopy of his throne there is an inscrip- 
tion in fiery letters, which they strive to read, but cannot; for 
it is written in words which are like the words of all languages, 
and yet are of none. Men say it is more like their own 
tongue to the English than it is to any other nation ; but the 
only record of it is by an Italian, who heard the King him - 
self cry it as a war cry, ‘Pape Satan, Pape Satan Aleppe.’ * 

Sipyt. But do they all perish there? You said there was 
a way through the valley, and out of it. 

L. Yes; but few find it. If any of them keep to the grass 
paths, where the diamonds are swept aside; and hold their 
hands over their eyes so as not to be dazzled, the grass paths 
lead forward gradually to a place where one sees a little open- 
ing in the golden rocks. You were at Chamouni last year, 
Sibyl; did your guide chance to show you the pierced rock 
of the Aiguille du Midi? 

Sisyt. No, indeed, we only got up from Geneva on Monday 

* Dante, Inf. 7, 1. 


THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS. 1% 


night; and it rained all Tuesday ; and we had to be back at 
Geneva again, early on Wednesday morning. 

L. Of course. That is the way to see a country in a Sibyl- 
line manner, by inner consciousness: but you might have 
seen the pierced rock in your drive up, or down, if the clouds 
broke: not that there is much to see in it; one of the crags 
of the aiguille-edge, on the southern slope of it, is struck 
sharply through, as by an awl, into a little eyelet hole ; which 
you may see, seven thousand feet above the valley (as the 
clouds flit past behind it, or leave the sky), first white, and 
then dark blue. Well, there’s just such an eyelet hole in one 
of the upper crags of the Diamond Valley ; and, from a dis- 
tance, you think that it is no bigger than the eye of a needle. 
But if you get up to it, they say you may drive a loaded camel 
through it, and that there are fine things on the other side, 
but I have never spoken with anybody who had been through. 

Srpvz. I think we understand it now. We will try to write 
it down, and think of it. 

L. Meantime, Florrie, though all that I have been telling 
you is very true, yet you must not think the sort of diamonds 
that people wear in rings and necklaces are found lying about 
on the grass. Would you like to see how they really are 
found ? 

Frorrte. Oh, yes—yes. 

L. Isabel—or Lily—run up to my room and fetch me the 
little box with a glass lid, out of the top drawer of the chest 
of drawers. (face between Lity and Isazet.) 

(Re-enter Isanet with the box, very much out of breath. Linx 

behind.) 

L. Why, you never can beat Lily in a race on the stairs, can 
you, Isabel? 

Isapen (panting). Lily—beat me—ever so far—but she gave 
me—the box—to carry in. 

L. Take off the lid, then; gently. 

Fiorrie (after peeping in, disappointed). There’s only a great 
ugly brown stone ! 

L. Not much more than that, certainly, Florrie, if people 
were wise. But look, it is not a single stone; but a knot of 


18 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


pebbles fastened together by gravel; and in the gravel, ot 
compressed sand, if you look close, you will see grains of gold 
glittering everywhere, all through ; and then, do you see these 
two white beads, which shine, as if they had been covered 
with grease ? 

Fiorrm. May I touch them ? 

L. Yes; you-will find they are not greasy, only very smooth. 
Well, those are the fatal jewels ; native here in their dust with 
gold, so that you may see, cradled here together, the two great 
enemies of mankind,—the strongest of all malignant physical 
powers that have tormented our race. 

Srpyz. Is that really so? I know they do great harm; but 
do they not also do great good ? 

L. My dear child, what good? Was any woman, do you 
suppose, ever the better for possessing diamonds? but how 
many have been made base, frivolous, and miserable by desir- 
ing them? Was ever man the better for having coffers full of 
gold? But who shall measure the guilt that is incurred to 
fill them? Look into the history of any civilised nations; an- 
alyse, with reference to this one cause of crime and misery, 
the lives and thoughts of their nobles, priests, merchants, and 
men of luxurious life. Every other temptation is at last con- 
centrated into this; pride, and lust, and envy, and anger all 
give up their strength to avarice. The sin of the whole world 
is essentially the sin of Judas. Men do not disbelieve their 
Christ ; but they sell Him. 

Srpvz. But surely that is the fault of human nature? it is 
not caused by the accident, as it were, of there being a pretty 
metal, like gold, to be found by digging. If people could not 
find that, would they not find something else, and quarrel for 
it instead ? 

L. No. Wherever legislators have succeeded in excluding, 
for a time, jewels and precious metals from among national 
possessions, the national spirit has remained healthy. Cove- 
tousness is not natural to man—generosity is ; but covetous- 
ness must be excited by a special cause, as a given disease by 
a given miasma; and the essential nature of a material for the 
excitement of covetousness is, that it shall be a beautiful thing 


THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS. 19 


which ean be retained without a use. The moment we can use 
our possessions to any good purpose ourselves, the instinct of 
communicating that use to others rises side by side with out 
power. If you can read a book rightly, you will want others 
to hear it; if you can enjoy a picture rightly, you will want 
others to see it: learn how to manage a horse, a plough, or a 
ship, and you will desire to make your subordinates good 
horsemen, ploughmen, or sailors ; you will never be able to 
see the fine instrument you are master of, abused ; but, once 
fix your desire on anything useless, and all the purest pride 
and folly in your heart will mix with the desire, and make you 
at last wholly inhuman, a mere ugly lump of stomach and 
suckers, like a cuttle-fish. 

Stsyz. But surely, these two beautiful things, gold and dia- 
monds, must have been appointed to some good purpose ? 

L. Quite conceivably so, my dear: as also earthquakes and 
pestilences ; but of such ultimate purposes we can have no 
sight. The practical, immediate office of the earthquake and 
pestilence is to slay us, like moths ; and, as moths, we shall be 
wise to live out of their way. So, the practical, immediate 
office of gold and diamonds is the multiplied destruction of 
souls (in whatever sense you have been taught to understand 
that phrase); and the paralysis of wholesome human effort 
and thought on the face of God’s earth: and a wise nation 
will live out of the way of them. The money which the Eng- 
lish habitually spend in cutting diamonds would, in ten years, 
if it were applied to cutting rocks instead, leave no dangerous 
reef nor difficult harbour round the whole island coast. Great 
Britain would be a diamond worth cutting, indeed, a true 
piece of regalia. (Leaves this to their thoughts for a little while.) 
Then, also, we poor mineralogists might sometimes have the 
chance of seeing a fine crystal of diamond unhacked by the 
jeweller. 

Srsyz. Would it be more beautiful uncut ? 

L. No; but of infinite interest. We might even come te 
know something about the making of diamonds. 

Srpyvt. I thought the chemists could make them already ? 

L. In very small black crystals, yes; but no one knows how 


20 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


they are formed where they are found ; or if indeed they are 
formed there at all. These, in my hand, look as if they had 
been swept down with the gravel and gold; only we can trace 
the gravel and gold to their native rocks, but not the dia- 
monds. Read the account given of the diamond in any good 
work on mineralogy ;—you will find nothing but lists of locali. 
ties of gravel, or conglomerate rock (which is only an old in- 
durated gravel). Some say it was once a vegetable gum ; but 
it may have been charred wood ; but what one would like to 
know is, mainly, why charcoal should make itself into dia- 
monds in India, and only into black lead in Borrowdale. 

Srpyz. Are they wholly the same, then ? 

L. There is a little iron mixed with our black lead but 
nothing to hinder its crystallisation. Your pencils in fact are 
all pointed with formless diamond, though they would be 
H H H pencils to purpose, if it crystallised. 

Sisyz. But what is crystallisation ? 

L. A pleasant question, when one’s half asleep, and it has 
been tea time these two hours. What thoughtless things 
girls are! 

Srpyz. Yes, we are; but we want to know, for all that. 

L. My dear, it would take a week to tell you. 

Srpyt. Well, take it, and tell us. 

L. But nobody knows anything about it. 

Sreyvt. Then tell us something that nobody knows. 

L. Get along with you, and tell Dora to make tea. 

(The house rises; but of course the Lecturer wanted ‘ta 
be forced to lecture again, and was.) 


LECTURE IL. 


THE PYRAMID BUILDERS. 


In the large Schoolroom, to which everybody has been summoned by 
ringing of the great bell. 
L. So you have all actually come to hear about crystallisa- 
tion! I cannot conceive why,unless the little ones think that 
the discussion may involve some reference to sugar-candy. 


(Symptoms of high displeasure among the younger members 
of council. IsaBeL frowns severely at L., and shakes her 
head violently. ) 


My dear children, if you knew it, you are yourselves, at 
this moment, as you sit in your ranks, nothing, in the eye of 
a mineralogist, but a lovely group of rosy sugar-candy, ar- 
ranged by atomic forces. And even admitting you to be 
something more, you have certainly been crystallising with- 
out knowing it. Did I not hear a great hurrying and whis- 
pering, ten minutes ago, when you were late in from the play- 
ground ; and thought you would not all be quietly seated by 
the time I was ready :—besides some discussion about places 
—something about ‘it’s not being fair that the little ones 
should always be nearest?’ Well, you were then all being 
crystallised. When you ran in from the garden, and against 
one another in the passages, you were in what mineralogists 
would call a state of solution, and gradual confluence ; when 
you got seated in those orderly rows, each in her proper 
place, you became crystalline. That is Just what the atoms of 
a mineral do, if they can, whenever they get disordered : 
they get into order again as soon as may be, 

I hope you feel inclined to interrupt me, and say, ‘ But we 
know our places ; how do the atoms know theirs? And some- 


22 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


times we dispute about our places; do the atoms—(and, be- 
sides, we don’t like being compared to atoms at all)—never 
dispute about theirs?’ ‘Two wise questions these, if you had 
a mind to put them! it was long before I asked them myself, 
of myself. And I will not call you atoms any more. May I 
call you—let me see—‘ primary molecules?’ (General dissent 
indicated in subdued but decisive murmurs.) No! not even, in 
familiar Saxon, ‘ dust ?’ 


(Pause, with expression on faces of sorrowful doubt; Lux 
gives voice to the general sentiment in a timid ‘ Please 
don't.’) 

No, children, I won't call you that ; and mind, as you grow 
up, that you do not get into an idle and wicked habit of call- 
ing yourselves that. You are something better than dust, 
and have other duties to do than ever dust can do; and the 
bonds of affection you will enter into are better than merely 
‘oetting into order.’ But see to it, on the other hand, that 
youalways behave at least as well as ‘dust ;’ remember, it is 
only on compulsion, and while it has no free permission to do 
as it likes, that 7¢ ever gets out of order ; but sometimes, with 
some of us, the compulsion has to be the other way—hasn’t 
it? (Remonstratory whispers, expressive of opinion that the 
Lecturer is becoming too personal.) I'm not looking at any- 
body in particular—indeed Iam not. Nay, if you blush so, 
Kathleen, how can one help looking? We'll go back to the 
atoms. 

‘How do they know their places?’ you asked, or should 
have asked. Yes, and they have to do much more than know 
them: they have to find their way to them, and that quietly 
and at once, without running against each other. 

We may, indeed, state it briefly thus :—Suppose you have 
to build a castle, with towers and roofs and buttresses, out 
of bricks of a given shape, and that these bricks are all lying 
in a huge heap at the bottom, in utter confusion, wpset out 
of carts at random. You would have to draw a great many 
plans, and count all your bricks, and be sure you had enough 
for this and that tower, before you began, and then you 


THE PYRAMID BUILDERS. 23 


would have to lay your foundation, and add layer by layer, in 
order, slowly. 

But how would you be astonished, in these melancholy 
days, when children don't read children’s books, nor believe 
any more in fairies, if suddenly a real benevolent fairy, in a 
bright brick-red gown, were to rise in the midst of the red 
bricks, and to tap the heap of them with her wand, and say: 
‘Bricks, bricks, to your places!’ and then you saw in an 
instant the whole heap rise in the air, like a swarm of red 
bees, and—you have been used to see bees make a honey- 
comb, and to think that strange enough, but now you would 
see the honeycomb make itself !—You want to ask something, 
Florrie, by the look of your eyes. 

Frorriz. Are they turned into real bees, with stings? 

L. No, Florrie ; you are only to fancy flying bricks, as you 
saw the slates flying from the roof the other day in the 
storm; only those slates didn’t seem to know where they 
were going, and, besides, were going where they had no 
business: but my spell-bound bricks, though they have no 
wings, and what is worse, no heads and no eyes, yet find 
their way in the air just where they should settle, into 
towers and roofs, each flying to his place and fastening there 
at the right moment, so that every other one shall fit to him 
in his turn. 

Liy. But who are the fairies, then, who build the crystals? 

L. There is one great fairy, Lily, who builds much more 
than crystals ; but she builds these also. I dreamed that I 
saw her building a pyramid, the other day, as she used to do, 
for the Pharaohs. 

Tsanet. But that was only a dream ? 

L. Some dreams are truer than some wakings, Isabel ; but 
I won't tell it you unless you like. 

Isapet. Oh, please, please. 

L. You are all such wise children, there’s no talking to 
you; you won't believe anything. 

Laity. No, we are not wise, and we will believe anything, 
when you say we ought 

L. Well, it came about this way. Sibyl, do you recollect 


24 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


that evening when we had been looking at your old cave by 
Cume, and wondering why you didn’t live there still; and 
then we wondered how old you were ; and Egypt said you 
wouldn’t tell, and nobody else could tell but she; and you 
laughed—I thought very gaily for a Sibyl—and said you 
would harness a flock of cranes for us, and we might fly over 
to Egypt if we liked, and see. 

Srpyt, Yes, and you went, and couldn’t find out after all! 

L. Why, you know, Egypt had been just doubling that 
third pyramid of hers ;* and making a new entrance into it ; 
and a fine entrance it was! First, we had to go through an 
ante-room, which had both its doors blocked up with stones; 
and then we had three granite portcullises to pull up, one 
after another; and the moment we had got under them, 
Keypt signed to somebody above; and down they came 
again behind us, with a roar like thunder, only louder; then 
we got into a passage fit for nobody but rats, and Egypt 
wouldn’t go any further herself, but said we might go on if 
we liked; and so we came to a hole in the pavement, and 
then to a granite trap-door—and then we thought we had 
gone quite far enough, and came back, and Egypt laughed 
at us. 

Eeyrr. You would not have had me take my crown off, 
and stoop all the way down a passage fit only for rats? 

L. It was not the crown, KEgypt—you know that very well. 
It was the flounces that would not let you go any farther. I 
suppose, however, you wear them as typical of the inunda- 
tion of the Nile, so it is all right. 

Isazex. Why didn’t you take me with you? Where rats 
can go, mice can. I wouldn’t have come back. 

L. No, mousie; you would have gone on by yourself, and 
you might have waked one of Pasht’s eats,t and it would 
have eaten you. I was very glad you were not there. But 
after all this, I suppose the imagination of the heavy granite 
blocks and the underground ways had troubled me, and 
dreams are often shaped in a strange opposition to the im- 
pressions that have caused them; and from all that we had 

* Note i + Note iii. 


THE PYRAMID BUILDERS. 25 


been reading in Bunsen about stones that couldn’t be lifted 
with levers, I began to dream about stones that lifted them- 
selves with wings. 

Stsyt. Now you must just tell us all about it. 

i. I dreamed that I was standing beside the lake, out of 
whose clay the bricks were made for the great pyramid of 
Asychis.* They had just been all finished, and were lying 
by the lake margin, in long ridges, like waves. It was near 
evening ; and as I looked towards the sunset, I saw a thing 
like a dark pillar standing where the rock of the desert stoops 
to the Nile valley. I did not know there was a pillar there, 
and wondered at it; and it grew larger, and glided nearer, 
becoming like the form of a man, but vast, and it did not 
move its feet, but glided like a pillar of sand. And as it drew 
nearer, I looked by chance past it, towards the sun; and saw 
a silver cloud, which was of all the clouds closest to the sun 
(and in one place crossed it), draw itself back from the sun, 
suddenly. And it turned, and shot towards the dark pillar ; 
leaping in an arch, like an arrow out of a bow. And I 
thought it was lightning; but when it came near the shadowy 
pillar, it sank slowly down beside it, and changed into the 
shape of a woman, very beautiful, and with a strength of 
deep calm in her blue eyes. She was robed to the feet with 
a white robe; and above that, to her knees, by the cloud 
which I had seen across the sun; but all the golden ripples 
of it had become plumes, so that it had changed into two 
bright wings like those of a vulture, which wrapped round 
her to her knees. She had a weaver’s shuttle hanging over 
her shoulder, by the thread of it, and in her left hand, ar- 
rows, tipped with fire. 

IsapeL (clapping her hands). Oh! it was Neith, it was 
Neith! I know now. 

L. Yes ; it was Neith herself; and as the two great spirits 
came nearer to me, I saw they were the Brother and Sister— 
the pillared shadow was the Greater Pthah + And I heard 
them speak, and the sound of their words was like a distant 
singing. I could not understand the words one by one; yet 

“ Note ii t Note iii 


26 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


their sense came to me; and so I knew that Neith had come 
down to see her brother’s work, and the work that he had 
put into the mind of the king to make his servants do. And 
she was displeased at it ; because she saw only pieces of dark 
clay; and no porphyry, nor marble, nor any fair stone that 
men might engrave the figures of the gods upon. And she 
blamed her brother, and said, ‘Oh, Lord of truth! is this 
then thy will, that men should mould only four-square pieces 
of clay: and the forms of the gods no more?’ Then the 
Lord of truth sighed, and said, ‘Oh! sister, in truth they do 
not love us; why should they set up our images? Let them 
do what they may, and not lie—let them make their clay 
four-square ; and labour; and perish.’ 

Then Neith’s dark blue eyes grew darker, and she said, 
‘Oh, Lord of truth! why should they love us? their love is 
vain ; or fear us? for their fear is base. Yet let them testify 
of us, that they knew we lived for ever.’ | 

But the Lord of truth answered, ‘They know, and yet they 
know not. Let them keep silence ; for their silence only is 
truth.’ 

But Neith answered, ‘ Brother, wilt thou also make league 
with Death, because Death is true? Oh! thou potter, who 
hast cast these human things from thy wheel, many to dis- 
honour, and few to honour ; wilt thou not let them so much 
- as see my face; but slay them in slavery ?’ 

But Pthah only answered, ‘ Let them build, sister, let them 
build.’ 

And Neith answered, ‘ What shall they build, if I build not 
with them ?’ ) 

And Pthah drew with his measuring rod upon the sand, 
And I saw suddenly, drawn on the sand, the outlines of great 
cities, and of vaults, and domes, and aqueducts, and bastions, 
and towers, greater than obelisks, covered with black clouds. 
And the wind blew ripples of sand amidst the lines that 
Pthah drew, and the moving sand was like the marching of 
men. But I saw that wherever Neith looked at the lines, 
they faded, and were effaced. 

‘Oh, Brother!’ she said at last, ‘what is this vanity? If] 


THE PYRAMID BUILDERS. 37 


who am Lady of wisdom, do not mock the children of men, 
why shouldst thou mock them, who art Lord of truth?’ But 
Pthah answered, ‘They thought to bind me; and they shall 
be bound. They shall labour in the fire for vanity.’ 

And Neith said, looking at the sand, ‘Brother, there is no 
true labour here—there is only weary life and wasteful 
death.’ 

And Pthah answered, ‘Is it not truer labour, sister, than 
thy sculpture of dreams ?’ 

Then Neith smiled ; and stopped suddenly. 

She looked to the sun ; its edge touched the horizon-edge 
of the desert. Then she looked to the long heaps of pieces 
of clay, that lay, each with its blue shadow, by the lake 
shore. 

‘ Brother,’ she said, ‘how long will this pyramid of thine be 
in building?’ 

‘Thoth will have sealed the scroll of the years ten times, 
before the summit is laid.’ 

‘Brother, thou knowest not how to teach thy children to 
labour,’ answered Neith. ‘Look! I must follow Phre be- 
yond Atlas; shall I build your pyramid for you before he 
goes down?’ And Pthah answered, ‘Yea, sister, if thou 
canst put thy winged shoulders to such work.’ And Neith 
drew herself to her height; and I heard a clashing pass 
through the plumes of her wings, and the asp stood up on 
her helmet, and fire gathered in her eyes. And she took one 
of the flaming arrows out of the sheaf in her left hand, and 
stretched it out over the heaps of clay. And they rose up 
like flights of locusts, and spread themselves in the air, so 
that it grew dark in amoment. Then Neith designed them 
places with her arrow point ; and they drew into ranks, like 
dark clouds laid level at morning. Then Neith pointed with 
her arrow to the north, and to the south, and to the east, and 
to the west, and the flying motes of earth drew asunder into 
four great ranked crowds ; and stood, one in the north, and 
one in the south, and one in the east, and one in the west— 
one against another. Then Neith spread her wings wide for 
an instant, and closed them with a sound like the sound of 


28 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


a rushing sea; and waved her hand towards the foundation 
of the pyramid, where it was laid on the brow of the desert. 
And the four flocks drew together and sank down, like sea- 
birds settling to a level rock; and when they met, there was 
a sudden flame, as broad as the pyramid, and as high as the 
clouds ; and it dazzled me; and I closed my eyes for an in- 
stant; and when I looked again, the pyramid stood on its 
rock, perfect ; and purple with the light from the edge of the 
sinking sun. 

THE YOUNGER CHILDREN (variously pleased). Im so glad! 
How nice! But what did Pthah say? 

L. Neith did not wait to hear what he would say. When 
I turned back to look at her, she was gone; and I only saw 
the level white cloud form itself again, close to the arch of 
the sun as it sank. And as the last edge of the sun disap- 
peared, the form of Pthah faded into a mighty shadow, and 
so passed away. 

Eaypt. And was Neith’s pyramid left ? 

L. Yes; but you could not think, Egypt, what a strange 
feeling of utter loneliness came over me when the presence 
of the two gods passed away. It seemed as if I had never 
known what it was to be alone before; and the unbroken 
line of the desert was terrible. 

Kieypr. I used to feel that, when I was queen: sometimes 
I had to carve gods, for company, all over my palace, I 
would fain have seen real ones, if I could. 

L. But listen a moment yet, for that was not quite all my 
dream. ‘The twilight drew swiftly to the dark, and I could 
hardly see the great pyramid ; when there came a heavy 
murmuring sound in the air; and a horned beetle, with ter- 
rible claws, fell on the sand at my feet, with a blow like the | 
beat of a hammer. Then it stood up on its hind claws, and 
waved its pincers at me: and its fore claws became strong 
arms, and hands; one grasping real iron pincers, and the © 
other a huge hammer ; and it had a helmet on its head, with- 
out any eyelet holes, that I could see. And its two hind 
claws became strong crooked legs, with feet bent inwards. 
And so there stood by me a dwarf, in glossy black armour, 


THE PYRAMID BUILDERS. 29 


ribbed and embossed like a beetle’s back, leaning on his ham- 
mer. And I could not speak for wonder; but he spoke with 
a murmur like the dying away of a beat upon abell. He 
said, ‘I will make Neith’s great pyramid small. I am the 
lower Pthah; and have power over fire. I can wither the 
strong things, and strengthen the weak ; and everything that 
is great I can make small, and everything that is little I can 
make great.’ Then he turned to the angle of the pyramid 
and limped towards it. And the pyramid grew deep purple ; 
and then red like blood, and then pale rose-colour, like fire. 
And I saw that it glowed with fire from within. And the 
lower Pthah touched it with the hand that held the pincers ; 
and it sank down like the sand in an hour-glass,—then drew 
itself together, and sank, still, and became nothing, it seemed 
to me ; but the armed dwarf stooped down, and took it into 
his hand, and brought it to me, saying, ‘ Everything that is 
great I can make like this pyramid; and give into men’s 
hands to destroy.’ And I saw that he had a little pyramid in 
his hand, with as many courses in it as the large one; and 
built like that, only so small. And because it glowed still, 1 
was afraid to touch it; but Pthah said, ‘ Touch it—for I have 
bound the fire within it, so that it cannot burn.’ So I 
touched it, and took it into my own hand; and it was cold ; 
only red, like aruby. And Pthah laughed, and became like 
a beetle again, and buried himself in the sand, fiercely ; 
throwing it back over his shoulders. And it seemed to me as 
if he would draw me down with him into the sand; and I 
started back, and woke, holding the little pyramid so fast in 
my hand that it hurt me. 

Eeypr. Holding wuart in your hand ? 

L. The httle pyramid. 

Eeyrt. Neith’s pyramid ? 

L. Neith’s, I believe; though not built for Asychis. I 
know only that it is a little rosy transparent pyramid, built 
of more courses of bricks than I can count, it being made so 
small. You don’t believe me, of course, Egyptian infidel ; 
but there itis, (Giving crystal of rose Fluor.) 


80 THE ETHICS OF THE DUS? 


(Confused examination by crowded audience, over each 
other's shoulders and under each other’s arms. Disap- 
pointment begins to manifest itself.) | 


Srsyz (not quite knowing why she and others are disappointed). 
But you showed us this the other day ! 

L. Yes; but you would not look at it the other day. 

Srzyt, But was all that fine dream only about this? 

L. What finer thing could a dream be about than this? 
It is small, if you will; but when you begin to think of things 
rightly, the ideas of smallness and largeness pass away. The 
making of this pyramid was in reality just as wonderful as 
the dream I have been telling you, and just as incomprehen- 
sible. It was not, I suppose, as swift, but quite as grand 
things are done as swiftly. When Neith makes crystals of 
snow, it needs a great deal more marshalling of the atoms, 
by her flaming arrows, than it does to make crystals like this 
one ; and that is done in a moment. 

Keyret, But how you do puzzle us! Why do you say Neith 
does it? You don’t mean that she is a real spirit, do you? 

L. What J mean, is of little consequence. What the Eeyp- 
tians meant, who called her ‘ Neith,—or Homer, who called 
her ‘Athena,’—or Solomon, who called her by a word which 
the Greeks render as ‘Sophia,’ you must judge for yourselves. 
But her testimony is always the same, and all nations have 
received it: ‘I was by Him as one brought up with Him, and 
I was daily His delight ; rejoicing in the habitable parts of 
the earth, and my delights were with the sons of men.’ 

Mary. But is not that only a personification ? 

L. If it be, what will you gain by unpersonifying it, or 
what right have you to do so? Cannot you accept the image 
given you, in its life; and listen, like children, to the words 
which chiefly belong to you as children: ‘I love them that 
Jove me, and those that seek me early shall find me?’ 


(They are all quiet fora minute or two; questions begin 
to appear in their eyes.) 


I cannot talk to you any more to-day. Take that rose 
erystal away with you, and think. 


LECTURE III. 


THE CRYSTAL LIFE. 


A very dull Lecture, wilfully brought upon themselves by the elder children, 
Some of the young ones have, however, managed to get in by mistake. 
ScENE, the Schoolroom. 


_L. So Iam to stand up here merely to be asked questions, 
to-day, Miss Mary, am I? 

Mary. Yes; and you must answer them plainly ; without 
telling us any more stories. You are quite spoiling the chil- 
dren: the poor little things’ heads are turning round lke 
kaleidoscopes ; and they don’t know in the least what you 
mean. Nor do we old ones, either, for that matter: to-day 
you must really tell us nothing but facts. 

L. Iam sworn ; but you won't like it, a bit. 

Mary. Now, first of all, what do you mean by ‘ bricks? ’— 
Are the smallest particles of minerals all of some accurate 
shape, like bricks ? 

L. I do not know, Miss Mary ; I do not even know if any- 
body knows. The smallest atoms which are visibly and prac- 
tically put together to make large crystals, may better be 
described as ‘limited in fixed directions’ than as ‘of fixed 
forms. But I can tell you nothing clear about ultimate 
atoms: you will find the idea of little bricks, or, perhaps, of 
little spheres, available for all the uses you will have to put 
it to. 

Mary. Well, it’s very provoking ; one seems always to be 
stopped just when one is coming to the very thing one wantg 
to know. 

L. No, Mary, for we should not wish to know anything but 
what is easily and assuredly knowable. There’s no end to it, 
If I could show you, or myself, a group of ultimate atoms, 


32 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


quite clearly, in this magnifying glass, we should both be 
presently vexed because we could not break them in two 
pieces, and see their insides. 

Mary. Well then, next, what do you mean by the flying of 
the bricks? What is it the atoms do, that is like flying? 

L. When they are dissolved, or uncrystallised, they are 
really separated from each other, like a swarm of gnats in the 
air, or like a shoal of fish in the sea ;—generally at about 
equal distances. In currents of solutions, or at different 
depths of them, one part may be more full of the dissolved 
atoms than another; but on the whole, you may think of 
them as equidistant, like the spots in the print of your gown. 
If they are separated by force of heat only, the substance is 
said to be melted; if they are separated by any other sub- 
stance, as particles of sugar by water, they are said to be 
‘dissolved.’ Note this distinction carefully, all of you. 

Dora. I will be very particular. When next you tell me 
there isn’t sugar enough in your tea, I will say, ‘It is not yet 
dissolved, sir.’ 

L. I tell you what shall be dissolved, Miss Dora ; and that’s 
the present parliament, if the members get too saucy. 


(Dora folds her hands and casts down her eyes.) 


L. (proceeds in state). Now, Miss Mary, you know already, 
I believe, that nearly everything will melt, under a sufficient 
heat, like .wax. Limestone melts (under pressure); sand 
melts ; granite melts ; the lava of a volcano is a mixed mass 
of many kinds of rocks, melted: and any melted substance 
nearly always, if not always, crystallises as it cools ; the more 
slowly the more perfectly. Water melts at what we call the 
freezing, but might just as wisely, though not as conveniently, 
call the melting, point; and radiates as it cools into the most 
beautiful of all known crystals. Glass melts at a greater heat, 
and will crystallise, if you let it cool slowly enough, in stars, 
much like snow. Gold needs more heat to melt it, but erys- 
tallises also exquisitely, as I will presently show you. Arsenic 
and sulphur crystallise from their vapours. Now in any of 
these cases, either of melted, dissolved, or vaporous bodies, 


THE CRYSTAL LIFE. 33 


the particles are usually separated from each other, either by 
heat, or by an intermediate substance ; and in crystallis- 
ing they are both brought nearer to each other, and packed, 
so as to fit as closely as possible: the essential part of the 
business being not the bringing together, but the packing. 
Who packed your trunk for you, last holidays, Isabel ? 

Isapet. Lily does, always. 

L. And how much can you allow for Lily’s good packing, 
in guessing what will go into the trunk ? 

Isapex. Oh! I bring twice as much as the trunk holds. 
Lily always gets everything in. 

Ly. Ah! but, Isey, if you only knew what a time it takes! 
and since you've had those great hard buttons on your frocks, 
I can’t do anything with them. Buttons won't go anywhere, 
you know. 

L. Yes, Lily, it would be well if she only knew what a time 
_ it takes ; and I wish any of us knew what a time crystallisa- 
tion takes, for that is consummately fine packing. The parti- 
cles of the rock are thrown down, just as Isabel brings her 
things—in a heap ; and innumerable Lilies, not of the valley, 
but of the rock, come to pack them. But it takes such a 
time ! 

However, the best—out and out the best—way of under- 
standing the thing, is to crystallise yourselves. 

Tue Avprence. Ourselves ! 

L. Yes; not merely as you did the other day, carelessly, 
on the schoolrcom forms ; but carefully and finely, out in the 
playground. You can play at crystallisation there as much as 
you please. 

Karuiren and Jesstz. Oh! how ?—how? 

L. First, you must put yourselves together, as close as you 
can, in the middle of the grass, and form, for first practice, 
any figure you like. 

Jessie. Any dancing figure, do you mean? 

L. No; I mean a square, or across, or adiamond. Any 
ficure you like, standing close together. You had better out- 
line it first on the turf, with sticks, or pebbles, so as to see 
that it is rightly drawn ; then get into it and enlarge or dimin- 


384 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


ish it at one side, till you are all quite in it, and no empty 
space left. 

Dora. Crinoline and all? 

L. The crinoline may stand eventually for rough crystalline 
surface, unless you pin it in; and then you may make a pol- 
ished crystal of yourselves. 

Lizy. Oh, we'll pin it in—we'll pin it in! 

L. Then, when you are all in the figure, let every one note 
her place, and who is next her on each side ; and let the out- 
siders count how many places they stand from the corners. 

Karsireren. Yes, yes,—and then ? 

L. Then you must scatter all over the playground—right 
over it from side to side, and end to end; and put yourselves 
all at equal distances from each other, everywhere. You 
needn’t mind doing it very accurately, but so as to be nearly 
equidistant ; not less than about three yards apart from each 
other, on every side. 

Jessie. We can easily cut pieces of string of equal length, 
to hold. And then? 

L. Then, at a given signal, let everybody walk, at the same 
rate, towards the outlined figure in the middle. You had 
better sing as you walk; that will keep you in good time. 
And as you close in towards it, let each take her place, and 
the next comers fit themselves in beside the first ones, till you 
are all in the figure again. 

Karutzen. Oh! how we shall run against each other! What 
fun it will be ! 

L. No, no, Miss Katie ; I can’t allow any running against 
each other. The atoms never do that, whatever human creat- 
ures do. You must all know your places, and find your way 
to them without jostling. 

Liy. But how ever shall we do that ? 

IsapeL. Mustn’t the ones in the middle be the nearest, and 
the outside ones farther off—when we go away to scatter, I 
mean ? 

L. Yes; you must be very careful to keep your order ; you 
will soon find out how to do it; it is only like soldiers form- — 
ing square, except that each must stand still in her place 


THE CRYSTAL LIFE. 35 


as she reaches it, and the others come round her; and you 
will have much more complicated figures, afterwards, to form, 
than squares. 

Isapet. Pl put a stone at my place : then I shall know it. 

L. You might each nail a bit of paper to the turf, at your 
place, with your name upon it: but it would be of no use, 
for if you don’t know your places, you will make a fine piece 
of business of it, while you are looking for your names. 
And, Isabel, if with a little head, and eyes, and a brain (all 
of them very good and serviceable of their kind, as such 
things go), you think you cannot know your place without a 
stone at it, after examining it well,—how do you think each 
atom knows its place, when it never was there before, and 
there’s no stone at it? 

Isapet. But does every atom know its place ? 

L. How else could it get there? 

Mary. Are they not attracted to their places ? 

L. Cover a piece of paper with spots, at equal intervals ; 
and then imagine any kind of attraction you choose, or any 
law of attraction, to exist between the spots, and try how, on 
that permitted supposition, you can attract them into the 
figure of a Maltese cross, in the middle of the paper. 

Mary (having tried it). Yes; I see that I cannot :—one 
would need all kinds of attractions, in different ways, at dif- 
fierent places. But you do not mean that the atoms are alive ? 

L. What is it to be alive? 

Dora. There now; youre going to be provoking, I know. 

L. I do not see why it should be provoking to be asked 
what it is to be alive. Do you think you don’t know whether 
you are alive or not? 


(IsaBet skips to the end of the room and back.) 


L. Yes, Isabel, that’s all very fine ; and you and I may call 
that being alive : but a modern philosopher calls it being in a 
‘mode of motion.’ It requires a certain quantity of heat to 
take you to the sideboard ; and exactly the same quantity te 
bring you back again. That’s all. 

Isapen. No, it isn’t. And besides, I’m not hot. 


86 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


L. Iam, sometimes, at the way they talk. However, you 
know, Isabel, you might have been a particle of a mineral, and 
yet have been carried round the room, or anywhere else, by 
chemical forces, in the liveliest way. 

TsapeL. Yes; but I wasn’t carried: I carried myself. 

L. The fact is, mousie, the difficulty is not so much to say 
what makes a thing alive, as what makes it a Self. As soon 
as you are shut off from the rest of the universe into a Self, 
you begin to be alive. 

Viotet (indignant). Oh, surely—surely that cannot be so. 
Is not all the life of the soul in communion, not separation ? 

LL. There can be no communion where there is no distine- 
tion. But we shall be in an abyss of metaphysics presently, 
if we don’t look out ; and besides, we must not be too grand, 
to-day, for the younger children. We'll be grand, some day, 
by ourselves, if we must. (The younger children are not 
pleased, and prepare to remonstrate ; but, knowing by eaperi- 
ence, that all conversations in which the word ‘communion’ 
occurs, are unintelligible, think better of it.) Meantime, for 
broad answer about the atoms. I do not think we should 
use the word ‘life,’ of any energy which does not belong to 
a given form. A seed, or an egg, or a young animal are pro- 
perly called ‘alive’ with respect to the force belonging: to 
those forms, which consistently develops that form, and no 
other. But the force which crystallises a mineral appears to 
be chiefly external, and it does not produce an entirely deter- 
minate and individual form, limited in size, but only an ag- 
gregation, in which some limiting laws must be observed. 

Mary. But I do not see much difference, that way, between - 
a crystal and a tree. 

L. Add, then, that the mode of the energy in a living 
thing implies a continual change in its elements; and a 
period for its end. So you may define life by its attached 
negative, death; and still more by its attached positive, 
birth. But I won’t be plagued any more about this, just 
now ; if you choose to think the crystals alive, do, and wel- 
come. Rocks have always been called ‘living’ in their na 
tive place. 


THE CRYSTAL LIFE. 34 


Mary. These’s one question more; then I’ve done. 

L. Only one? 

Mary. Only one. 

L. But if it is answered, won’t it turn into two? 

Mary. No; I think it will remain single, and be comforta 
able. 

L. Let me hear it. 

Mary. You know, we are to crystallise ourselves out of 
the whole playground. Now, what playground have the 
minerals? Where are they scattered before they are crystal- 
lised ; and where are the crystals generally made ? 

L. That sounds to me more like three questions than one, 
Mary. If it is only one, it is a wide one. 

Mary. I did not say anything about the width of it. 

L. Well, I must keep it within the best compass I can. 
When rocks either dry from a-moist state, or cool from a 
heated state, they necessarily alter in bulk; and cracks, or 
open spaces, form in them in all directions. These cracks 
must be filled up with solid matter, or the rock would even- 
tually become a ruinous heap. So, sometimes by water, 
sometimes by vapour, sometimes nobody knows how, crystal- 
lisable matter is brought from somewhere, and fastens itself 
in these open spaces, so as to bind the rock together again, 
with crystal cement. A vast quantity of hollows are formed. 
in lavas by bubbles of gas, just as the holes are left in bread 
well baked. In process of time these cavities are generally 
filled with various crystals. 

Mary. But where does the crystallising substance come from? 

L. Sometimes out of the rock itself ; sometimes from below 
or above, through the veins. The entire substance of the 
contracting rock may be filled with liquid, pressed into it so 
as to fill every pore ;—or with mineral vapour ;—or it may 
be so charged at one place, and empty at another. There’s 
no end to the ‘may be’s.’ But all that you need fancy, for 
our present purpose, is that hollows in the rocks, like the 
caves in Derbyshire, are traversed by liquids or vapour con- 
taining certain elements in a more or less free or separate 
state, which crystallise on the cave walls. 


38 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


Srpyt. There now ;—Mary has had all her questions an: 
swered : it’s my turn to have mine. | 

L. Ah, there’s a conspiracy among you, I see. I might 
have guessed as much. 

Dora. Pm sure you ask us questions enough! How can 
you have the heart, when you dislike so to be asked them 
yourself ? 

L. My dear child, if people do not answer questions, it 
does not matter how many they are asked, because they've 
no trouble with them. Now, when I ask you questions, I 
never expect to be answered; but when you ask me, you 
always do ; and it’s not fair. 

Dora. Very well, we shall understand, next time. 

Stsyzt. No, but seriously, we all want to ask one thing 
more, quite dreadfully. 

L. And I don’t want to he asked it, quite dreadfully ; but 
you'll have your own way, of course. 

Srpyt. We none of us understand about the lower Pthah. 
It was not merely yesterday ; but in all we have read about 
him in Wilkinson, or in any book, we cannot understand 
what the Egyptians put their god into that ugly little de- 
formed shape for. 

L. Well, I'm glad it’s that sort of question ; because I can 
answer anything I like, to that. 

Heyer. Anything you like will do quite well for us; we 
shall be pleased with the answer, if you are. 

L. I am not so sure of that, most gracious queen; for I 
must begin by the statement that queens seem to have dis- 
liked all sorts of work, in those days, as much as some queens 
dislike sewing to-day. 

Eeyer. Now, it’s too bad! and just when I was trying to 
say the civillest thing I could! 

L. But, Egypt, why did you tell me you disliked sewing 
so? 

Keypr. Did not I show you how the thread cuts my fin- 
gers? and I always get cramp, somehow, in my neck, if I sew 
long. 


L. Well, I suppose the Egyptian queens thought every: 


THE CRYSTAL LIFE. 39 


body got cramp in their neck, if they sewed long; and that 
thread always cut people’s fingers. At all events, every 
kind of manual labour was despised both by them, and the 
Greeks ; and, while they owned the real good and fruit of it, 
they yet held it a degradation to all who practised it. Also, 
knowing the laws of hfe thoroughly, they perceived that the 
special practice necessary to bring any manual art to perfec- 
tion strengthened the body distortedly ; one energy or mem- 
ber gaining at the expense of the rest. They especially 
dreaded and despised any kind of work that had to be done 
near fire: yet, feeling what they owed to it in metal-work, as 
the basis of all other work, they expressed this mixed rever- 
ence and scorn in the varied types of the lame Hepheestus, 
and the lower Pthah. 

Spyz. But what did you mean by making him say ‘every- 
thing great I can make small, and everything small great ?’ 

L. I had my own separate meaning in that. We have seen 
in modern times the power of the lower Pthah developed in 
a separate way, which no Greek nor Egyptian could have 
conceived. It is the character of pure and eyeless manual 
labour to conceive everything as subjected to it: and, in 
reality, to disgrace and diminish all that is so subjected ; ag- 
erandising itself, and the thought of itself, at the expense of 
all noble things. I heard an orator, and a good one too, at 
the Working Men’s College, the other day, make a great 
point in a description of our railroads ; saying, with grandly 
conducted emphasis, ‘'They have made man greater, and the 
world less.’ His working audience were mightily pleased ; 
they thought it so very fine a thing to be made bigger them- 
selves ; and all the rest of the world less. Ishould have en- 
joyed asking them (but it would have been a pity—they 
were so pleased), how much less they would like to have the 
world made ;—and whether, at present, those of them really 
felt the biggest men, who lived in the least houses. 

Srsvz. But then, why did you make Pthah say that he 
could make weak things strong, and small things great ? 

L. My dear, he is a boaster and self-assertor, by nature ; 
but it is so far true. Jor instance, we used to have a fair 





40 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


in our neighbourhood—a very fine fair we thought it. You 
never saw such an one ; but if you look at the engraving of 
Turner’s ‘St. Catherine’s Hill,’ you will see what it was like. 
There were curious booths, carried on poles; and peep-shows ; 
and music, with plenty of drums and cymbals; and much 
barley-sugar and gingerbread, and the like: and in the alleys 
of this fair the London populace would enjoy themselves, 
after their fashion, very thoroughly. Well, the little Pthah 
set to work upon it one day; he made the wooden poles into 
iron ones, and put them across, like his own crooked legs, 
so that you always fall over them if you don’t look where you 
are going ; and he turned all the canvas into panes of glass, 
and put it up on his iron cross-poles ; and made all the little 
booths into one great booth ; and people said it was very 
fine, dnd anew style of architecture ; and Mr. Dickens said 
nothing was ever like it in Fairy-land, which was very true. 
And then the little Pthah set to work to put fine fairings in 
it ; and he painted the Nineveh bulls afresh, with the blackest 
eyes he could paint (because he had none himself), and he 
got the angels down from Lincoln choir, and gilded their 
wings like his gingerbread of old times; and he sent for 
everything else he could think of, and put it in his booth. 
There are the castsof Niobe and her children ; and the Chim- | 
panzee ; and the wooden Caffres and New-Zealanders; and 
the Shakespeare House; and Le Grand Blondin, and Le 
Petit Blondin; and Handel; and Mozart; and no end of 
shops, and buns, and beer ; and all the little-Pthah-worship- 
pers say, never was anything so sublime ! 

Stsyz, Now, do you mean to say you never go to these 
Crystal Palace concerts? They’re as good as good can be. 

L. I don’t go to the thundering things with a million of 
bad voices in them. When I want a song, I get Julia Man- 
nering and Lucy Bertram and Counsellor Pleydell to sing 
‘We be three poor Mariners’ to me; then I’ve no headache 
next morning. But I do go to the smaller concerts, when J 
can ; for they are very good, as you say, Sibyl: and I always 
get a reserved seat somewhere near the orchestra, where ] 
am sure | can see the kettle-drummer drum. 


THE CRYSTAL LIFE. 41 


Sisyt. Now do be serious, for one minute. 

L. I am serious—never was more so. You know one can’t 
see the modulation of violinists’ fingers, but one can see the 
vibration of the drummer’s hand ; and it’s lovely. 

Srpyz. But fancy going to a concert, not to hear, but to 
see ! 

L. Yes, itis very absurd. The quite right thing, I believe, 
is to go there to talk. I confess, however, that in most 
music, when very well done, the doing of it is to me the 
chiefly interesting part of the business. I’m always thinking 
how good it would be for the fat, supercilious people, who 
care so little for their half-crown’s worth, to be set to try and 
do a half-crown’s worth of anything like it. 

Mary. But surely that Crystal Palace is a great good and 
help to the people of London ? 

L. The fresh air of the Norwood hills is, or was, my dear ; 
but they are spoiling that with smoke as fast as they can, 
And the palace (as they call it) is a better place for them, by 
much, than the old fair; and it is always there, instead of for 
three days only ; and it shuts up at proper hours of night. 
And good use may be made of the things in it, if you know 
how: but as for its teaching the people, it will teach them 
nothing but the lowest of the lower Pthah’s work—nothing 
but hammer and tongs. I saw a wonderful piece, of his 
doing, in the place, only the other day. Some unhappy 
metal-worker—I am not sure if it was not a metal-working 
firm—had taken three years to make a Golden eagle. 

Srpyz. Of real gold? 

L. No; of bronze, or copper, or some of their foul patent 
metal—it is no matter what. I meant a model of our chief 
British eagle. Every feather was made separately; and 
every filament of every feather separately, and so joined on ; 
and all the quills modelled of the right length and right sec- 
tion, and at last the whole cluster of them fastened together 
You know, children, I don’t think much of my own drawing ; 
but take my proud word for once, that when I go to the 
Zoological Gardens, and happen to have a bit of chalk in my 
pocket, and the Gray Harpy will sit, without screwing his 


42 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


head round, for thirty seconds,—I can do a better thing of 
him in that time than the three years’ work of this industri- 
ous firm. For, during the thirty seconds, the eagle is my 
object,—not myself ; and during the three years, the firm’s 
object, in every fibre of bronze it made, was itself, and not 
the eagle. That is the true meaning of the little Pthah’s 
having no eyes—he can see only himself. The Egyptian 
beetle was not quite the full type of him; our northern 
ground beetle is a truer one. It is beautiful to see it at work, 
gathering its treasures (such as they are) into little round 
balls ; and pushing them home with the strong wrong end of 
it,—head downmost all the way,—like a modern political 
cconomist with his ball of capital, declaring that a nation can 
stand on its vices better than on its virtues. But away with 
you, children, now, for I’m getting cross. 

Dora. I'm going down-stairs; I shall take care, at any 
rate, that there are no little Pthahs in the kitchen cupboards, 


LECTURE IV. 


THE CRYSTAL ORDERS. 
A working Lecture, in the large School-room ; with experimental Interludes, 
The great bell has rung unexpectedly. 

Kartu xen (entering disconsolate, though first at the summons). 
Oh dear, oh dear, what a day! Was ever anything so provok- 
ing! just when we wanted to crystallise ourselves ;—and I’m 
sure it’s going to rain all day long. 

L. So am I, Kate. The sky has quite an Irish way with it. 
But I don’t see why Irish girls should also look so dismal. 
Fancy that you don’t want to crystallise yourselves: you 
didn’t, the day before yesterday, and you were not unhappy 
when it rained then. 

Frorrie. Ah! but we do want to-day; and the rain’s so 
tiresome. 

L. That is to say, children, that because you are all the 
richer by the expectation of playing at a new game, you choose 
to make yourselves unhappier than when you had nothing to 
look forward to, but the old ones. 

Isaset. But then, to have to wait—wait—wait; and before 
we've tried it ;—and perhaps it will rain to-morrow, too! 

L. It may also rain the day after to-morrow. We can make 
ourselves uncomfortable to any extent with perhapses, Isabel. 
You may stick perhapses into your little minds, like pins, till 
you are as uncomfortable as the Lilliputians made Gulliver 
with their arrows, when he would not lie quiet. 

IsaBeL. But what are we to do to-day? 

L. To be quiet, for one thing, like Gulliver when he saw 
there was nothing better to be done. And to practise patience, 
I can tell you children, that requires nearly as much practising 
as music ; and we are continually losing our lessons when the 
master comes. Now, to-day, here’s a nice little adagio lesson 
for us, if we play it properly. 


t+ THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


Isapet. But I don’t like that sort of lesson. I can’t play it 
properly. 

L. Can you play a Mozart sonata yet, Isabel? The more 
need to practise. All one’s life is a music, if one touches the 
notes rightly, and in time. But there must be no hurry. 

Karsueen. ['m sure there’s no music in stopping in ona 
rainy day. 

L. There’s no music in a ‘rest,’ Katie, that I know of: but 
there’s the making of music in it. And people are always 
missing that part of the life-melody ; and scrambling on with- 
out counting—not that it’s easy to count; but nothing on 
which so much depends ever is easy. People are always talk- 
ing of perseverance, and courage, and fortitude ; but patience 
is the finest and worthiest part of fortitude,—and the rarest, 
too. I know twenty persevering girls for one patient one: 
but it is only that twenty-first who can do her work, out and 
out, or enjoy it. For patience les at the root of all pleasures, 
as well as of all powers. Hope herself ceases to be happiness, 
when Impatience companions her. 


(Isapet and Liny sit down on the floor, and fold their hands. 
The others follow their example.) 


Good children! but that’s not quite the way of it, neither. 
Folded hands are not necessarily resigned ones. The Pa- 
tience who really smiles at grief usually stands, or walks, or 
even runs: she seldom sits ; though she may sometimes have 
to do it, for many a day, poor thing, by monuments; or like 
Chaucer’s, ‘with facé pale, upon a hill of sand.’ But we are 
not reduced to that to-day. Suppose we use this calamitous 
forenoon to choose the shapes we are to crystallise into? we 
know nothing about them yet. 


(The pictures of resignation rise from the floor, not in the 
patientest manner. General applause.) 


Mary (with one or two others). The very thing we wanted 
to ask you about ! 

Liv. We looked at the books about crystals, but they are 
so dreadful. 


THE CRYSTAL ORDERS. 45 


L. Well, Lily, we must go through a little dreadfulness, 
that’s a fact: no road to any good knowledge is wholly 
among the lilies and the grass ; there is rough climbing to be 
done always. But the crystal-books are a little too dreadful, 
most of them, I admit ; and we shall have to be content with 
very little of their help. You know, as you cannot stand on 
each other’s heads, you can only make yourselves into the 
sections of crystals,—the figures they show when they are 
cut through ; and we will choose some that will be quite easy. 
You shall make diamonds of yourselves 

Isapet. Oh, no, no! we won’t be diamonds, please. 

L. Yes, you shall, Isabel; they are very pretty things, if 
the jewellers, and the kings and queens, would only let them 
alone. Youshall make diamonds of yourselves, and rubies of 
yourselves, and emeralds; and Irish diamonds ; two of those 
—with Lily in the middle of one, which will be very orderly, 
of course ; and Kathleen in the middle of the other, for which 
we will hope the best ;—and you shall make Derbyshire spar 
of yourselves, and Iceland spar, and gold, and silver, and— 
Quicksilver there’s enough of in you, without any making. 

Mary. Now, you know, the children will be getting quite 
wild: we must really get pencils and paper, and begin properly. 

L. Wait a minute, Miss Mary ; I think as we’ve the school 
room clear to-day, Pll try to give you some notion of the 
three great orders or ranks of crystals, into which all the 
others seem more or less to fall. We shall only want one 
figure a day, in the playground ; and that can be drawn in a 
minute : but the general ideas had better be fastened first. I 
must show you a great many minerals; so let me have three 
tables wheeled into the three windows, that we may keep our 
specimens separate ;—we will keep the three orders of crys- 
tals on separate tables. 





(First Interlude, of pushing and pulling, and spreading of 
baize covers. VioLEt, not particularly minding what she is 
about, gets herself jammed into a corner, and bid to stand 
out of the way; on which she devotes herself to medi- 
tation.) 


46 THE HTHICS OF THE DUST. 


Viotet (after interval of meditation). How strange it is that 
everything seems to divide into threes ! 

L. Everything doesn’t divide into threes. Ivy won’t, though 
shamrock will ; and daisies won’t, though lilies will. 

Viotet. But all the nicest things seem to divide into threes. 

L. Violets won’t. . 

Viotet. No ; I should think not, indeed! But I mean the 
great things. | 

L. Ive always heard the globe had four quarters. 

Isapet. Well; but you know you said it hadn't any quarters 
at all. So mayn’t it really be divided into three? 

L. If it were divided into no more than three, on the out- 
side of it, Isabel, it would be a fine world to live in; and if 
it were divided into three in the inside of it, it would soon be 
no world to live in at all. 

Dora. We shall never get to the crystals, at this rate. 
(Aside to Mary.) He will get off into political economy be- 
fore we know where we are. (Aloud.) But the crystals are 
divided into three, then ? . 

L. No; but there are three general notions by which we 
may best get holdof them. Then between these notions there 
are other notions. | 

Lity (alarmed). A great many? And shall we have to 
learn them all? 

L. More than a great many—a quite infinite many. So 
you cannot learn them all. 

Liy (greatly relieved). 'Then may we only learn the three? 

L. Certainly ; unless, when you have got those three no- 
tions, you want to have some more notions ;—which would 
not surprise me. But we'll try for the three, first. Katie, 
you broke your coral necklace this morning ? 

Karstrren. Oh! who told you? It was in jumping. Tm 
so sorry ! 

L. I'm very glad. Can you fetch me the beads of it? 

Katsteen. I’ve lost some ; here are the rest in my pocket, 
if I can only get them out. 

L. You mean to get them out some day, I suppose ; so try 
now. I want them. 


THE CRYSTAL ORDERS. 4) 


(KaTHLEEN empties her pocket on the floor. The beads dis 
perse. The Schoo! disperses also. Second Interlude— 
hunting ptece.) 


L. (after waiting patiently for « quarter of an hour, to Isaset, 
who comes up from under the table with her hair all about her 
ears, and the last jfindable beads in her hand). Mice are useful 
little things sometimes. Now, mousie, I want all those beads 
crystallised. How many ways are there of putting them in 
order ? 

IsapeL. Well, first one would string them, I suppose ? 

L. Yes, that’s the first way. You cannot string ultimate 
atoms ; but you can put them in a row, and then they fasten 
themselves together, somehow, into a long rod or needle. Wea 
will call these ‘ Needle-crystals.’ What would be the next way } 

Isapet. I suppose, as we are to get together in the play- 
ground, when it stops raining, in different shapes ? 

L. Yes ; put the beads together, then, in the simplest form 
you can, to begin with. Put them into a square, and pack 
them close. 

IsazeL (after careful endeavour). I can’t get them closer. 

L. That will do. Now you may see, beforehand, that if you 
try to throw yourselves into square in this confused way, 
you will never know your places ; so you had better consider 
every square as made of rods, put side by side. Take four 
beads of equal size, first, Isabel ; put them into a little square. 
That, you may consider as made up of two rods of two beads 
each. Then you can make a square a size larger, out of three 
rods of three. Then the next square may be a size larger. 
How many rods, Lily ? 

Lizy. Four rods of four beads each, I suppose. 

L. Yes, and then five rods of five, and so on. But now, 
look here ; make another square of four beads again. You see 
they leave a little opening in the centre. 

IsaBeL (pushing two opposite ones closer together). Now they 
don’t. 

L. No; but now it isn’t a square ; and by pushing the twa 
together you have pushed the two others farther apart. 


48 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


Isapex. And yet, somehow, they all seem closer than they 
were ! 

L. Yes; for before, each of them only touched two of the 
others, but now each of the two in the middle touches the 
other three. Take away one of the outsiders, Isabel ; now you 
have three in a triangle—the smallest triangle you can make 
out of the beads. Now put a rod of three beads on at one 
side. So, you have a triangle of six beads ; but just the shape 
of the first one. Next a rod of four on the side of that; and 
you have a triangle of ten beads: then a rod of five on the 
side of that ; and you have a triangle of fifteen. Thus you 
have a square with five beads on the side, and a triangle with 
five beads on the side; equal-sided, therefore, like the square. 
So, however few or many you may be, you may soon learn 
how to crystallise quickly into these two figures, which are 
the foundation of form in the commonest, and therefore act- 
ually the most important, as well as in the rarest, and there- 
fore, by our esteem, the most important, minerals of the 
world, Look at this in my hand. 

Viotet. Why, it is leaf-gold ! 

L. Yes; but beaten by no man’s hammer ; or rather, not 
beaten at all, but woven. Besides, feel the weight of it. 
There is gold enough there to gild the walls and ceiling, # it 
were beaten thin. 

Vioter. How beautiful! And it glitters like a leaf covered 
with frost, 

L. You only think it so beautiful because you know it is 
gold. It is not prettier, in reality, than a bit of brass: for it 
is Transylvanian gold; and they say there is a foolish gnome 
in the mines there, who is always wanting to live in the moon, 
and so alloys all the gold with a little silver. I don’t know 
how that may be: but the silver always zs in the gold ; and if 
he does it, it’s very provoking of him, for no gold is woven so 
fine anywhere else. 

Mary (who has been looking through her magnifying glass). 
But this is not woven. This is all made of little triangles. 

i. Say ‘patched,’ then, if you must beso particular. But 
if you fancy all those triangles, small as they are (and many 


THE CRYSTAL ORDERS, 49 


of them are infinitely small), made up again of rods, and those 
of grains, as we built our great triangle of the beads, what 
word will you take for the manufacture ? 

May. There’s no word—it is beyond words. 

L. Yes; and that would matter little, were it not beyond 
thoughts too. But, at all events, this yellow leaf of dead gold, 
shed, not from the ruined woodlands, but the ruined rocks, 
will help you to remember the second kind of crystals, Leaf- 
crystals, or Foliated crystals ; though I show you the form in 
gold first only to make a strong impression on you, for gold 
is not generally, or characteristically, crystallised in leaves ; 
the real type of foliated crystals is this thing, Mica; which if 
you once feel well, and break well, you will always know again ; 
and you will often have occasion to know it, for you will find it 
everywhere, nearly, in hill countries. 

Kavutren. If we break it well! May we break it? 

L. To powder, if you like. 


(Surrenders plate of brown mica to public investigation. 
Third Interlude. It sustains severely philosophical treat- 
ment at all hands. ) 


Frorrim. (to whom the last fragments have descended) Always 
leaves, and leaves, and nothing but leaves, or white dust ! 

L. That dust itself is nothing but finer leaves. 

(Shows them to Fiorriz through magnifying glass.) 

TsaBeL (peeping over Fiorriz’s shoulder). But then this bit 
under the glass looks like that bit out of the glass! If we 
eould break this bit under the glass, what would it be like ? 

L. It would be all leaves still. 

Isapex. And then if we broke those again ? 

L. All less leaves still. 

IsaBen (impatient) And if we broke them again, and again, 
and again, and again, and again? 

L. Well, I suppose you would come to a limit, if you could 
only see it. Notice that the little flakes already differ some- 
what from the large ones: because I can bend them up and 
down, and they stay bent; while the large flake, though it 
bent easily a little way, sprang back when you let it go, and 


50 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


broke, when you tried to bendit far. And a large mass would 
not bend at all. 

Mary. Would that leaf gold separate into finer leaves, in 
the same way ? 

L. No; and therefore, as I told you, it is not a characteris- 
tic specimen of a foliated crystallisation. The little triangles 
are portions of solid crystals, and so they are in this, which 
looks like a black mica ; but you see it is made up of triangles 
like the gold, and stands, almost accurately, as an intermedi- 
ate link, in crystals, between mica and gold. Yet this is the 
commonest, as gold the rarest, of metals. 

Mary. Is it iron? I never saw iron so bright. 

L. It is rust of iron, finely crystallised: from its resem- 
blance to mica, it is often called micaceous iron. 

Karutren. May we break this, too ? 

L. No, for I could not easily. get such another crystal ; 
besides, it would not break like the mica; it is much harder. 
But take the glass again, and look at the fineness of the jag- 
ged edges of the triangles where they lap over each other. 
The gold has the same: but you see them better here, terrace 
above terrace, countless, and in successive angles, like superb 
fortified bastions. 

May. But all foliated crystals are not made of triangles? 

L. Far from it; mica is occasionally so, but usually of 
hexagons ; and here is a foliated crystal made of squares, which 
will show you that the leaves of the rock-land have their sum- 
mer green, as well as their autumnal gold. 

Frorrte. Oh! oh! oh! (jumps for joy). 

L. Did you never see a bit of green leaf before, Florrie ? 

Frorriz. Yes, but never so bright as that, and not in a 
seone. 

L. If you will look at the leaves of the trees in sunshine 
after a shower, you will find they are much brighter than 
that ; and surely they are none the worse for being on stalks 
instead of in stones ? 

Frorrte. Yes, but then there are so many of them, one 
never looks, I suppose. 

L. Now you have it, Florrie. 


THE ORYSTAL ORDERS. Hl 


VioitET (sighing). There are so many beautiful things we 
never see ! 

L. You need not sigh for that, Violet ; but I will tell you 
what we should all sigh for,—that there are so many ugly 
things we never see. 

Vioter. But we don’t want to see ugly things! 

L. You had better say, ‘We don’t want to suffer them.’ 
You ought to be glad in thinking how much more beauty God 
has made, than human eyes can ever see; but not glad in 
thinking how much more evil man bas made, than his own 
soul can ever conceive, much more than his hands can ever 
heal. 

Vioter. I don’t understand ;—how is that like the leaves ? 

L. The same law holds in our neglect of multipled pain, as 
in our neglect of multiplied beauty. Florrie jumps for joy at 
sight of half an inch of a green leaf in a brown stone; and 
takes more notice of it than of all the green in the wood: and 
you, or I, or any of us, would be unhappy if any single human 
creature beside us were in sharp pain; but we can read, at 
breakfast, day after day, of men being killed, and of women 
and children dying of hunger, faster than the leaves strew the 
brooks in Vallombrosa ;—and then go out to play croquet, as 
if nothing had happened. 

May. But we do not see the people being killed or dying. 

L. You did not see your brother, when you got the tele- 
gram the other day, saying he was ill, May ; but you cried for 
him ; and played no croquet. But we cannot talk of these 
things now ; and what is more, you must let me talk straight 
on, for a little while ; and ask no questions till I've done: for 
we branch (‘exfoliate,’ I should say, mineralogically) always 
into something else,—though that’s my fault more than yours ; 
but I must go straight on now. You have got a distinct 
notion, I hope, of leaf-crystals ; and you see the sort of look 
they have: you can easily remember that ‘folium’ is Latin 
for a leaf, and that the separate flakes of mica, or any other 
such stones, are called ‘folia;’ but, because mica is the most 
cheracteristic of these stones, other things that are like it in 
structure are called ‘micas ;’ thus we have Uran-mica, which 


52 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


is the green leaf I showed you; and Copper-mica, which is 
another like it, made chiefly of copper ; and this foliated iron 
is called ‘micaceous iron.’ You have then these two great 
orders, Needle-crystals, made (probably) of grains in rows ; 
and Leaf-crystals, made (probably) of needles interwoven ; 
now, lastly, there are crystals of a third order, in heaps, or 
knots, or masses, which may be made, either of leaves laid 
one upon another, or of needles bound like Roman fasces ; and 
mica itself, when it is well crystallised, puts itself into such 
masses, as if to show us how others’ are made. Here is a 
brown six-sided crystal, quite as beautifully chiselled at the 
sides as any castle tower ; but you see it is entirely built of 
folia of mica, one laid above another, which break away the 
moment I touch the edge with my knife. Now, here is an- 
other hexagonal tower, of just the same size and colour, which 
I want you to compare with the mica carefully ; but as I can- 
not wait for you to do it just now, I must tell you quickly 
what main differences to look for. First, you will feel it is far 
heavier than the mica. Then, though its surface looks quite 
micaceous in the folia of it, when you try them with the knife, 
you will find you cannot break them away 

Karuteen. May I try ? 

L. Yes, you mistrusting Katie. Here’s my strong knife 
for you. (Hxperimental pause. Karuteen doing her best.) 
Yow 'll have that knife shutting on your finger presently, Kate ; 
and I don’t know a girl who would like less to have her hand 
tied up for a week. 

KATHLEEN (who also does not like to be beaten—giving up the 
knife despondenily). What can the nasty hard thing be? 

L. It is nothing but indurated clay, Kate: very hard set 
certainly, yet not so hard as it might be. If it were thor- 
oughly well crystallised, you would see none of those mica- 
ceous fractures ; and the stone would be quite red and clear, 
all through. 

KaruiEEN. Oh, cannot you show us one? 

L. Egypt can, if you ask her; she has a beautiful one in the 
clasp of her favourite bracelet. 

Karuieen. Why, that’s a ruby } 





THE CRYSTAL ORDERS. 53 


L. Well, so is that thing you’ve been scratching at. 
Katuiren. My goodness! 


(Takes up the stone again, very delicately; and drops it. 
General consternation.) 


L. Never mind, Katie ; you might drop it from the top of 
the house, and doit no harm. But though you really are 
avery good girl, and as good-natured as anybody can possi- 
bly be, remember, you have your faults, like other people ; 
and, if I were you, the next time I wanted to assert anything 
energetically, I would assert it by ‘my badness,’ not ‘my good- 
ness.’ 

Karutren. Ah, now, it’s too bad of you! 

L. Well, then, I'll invoke, on occasion, my ‘too-badness.’ 
But you may as well pick up the ruby, now you have dropped 
it ; and look carefully at the beautiful hexagonal lines which 
gleam on its surface ; and here is a pretty white sapphire (essen- 
tially the same stone as the ruby), in which you will see the 
same lovely structure, like the threads of the finest white 
cobweb. Ido not know what is the exact method of a ruby’s 
construction ; but you see by these lines, what fine construction 
there is, even in this hardest of stones (after the diamond), 
which usually appears as a massive lump or knot. There is 
therefore no real mineralogical distinction between needle 
crystals and knotted crystals, but, practically, crystallised 
masses throw themselves into one of the three groups we 
have been examining to-day ; and appear either as Needles, 
as Folia, or as Knots; when they are in needles (or fibres), 
they make the stones or rocks formed out of them ‘fibrous ;’ 
when they are in folia, they make them ‘foliated ;’ when they 
are in knots (or grains), ‘ granular.’ Fibrous rocks are com- 
paratively rare, in mass; but fibrous minerals are innumer- 
able ; and it is often a question which really no one but a 
young lady could possibly settle, whether one should call the 
fibres composing them ‘threads’ or ‘ needles.’ Here is amian- 
thus, for instance, which is quite as fine and soft as any cotton 
thread you ever sewed with ; and here is sulphide of bismuth, 
with sharper points and brighter lustre than your finest 


D4 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


needles have; and fastened in white webs of quartz more 
delicate than your finest lace; and here is sulphide of anti- 
mony, which looks like mere purple wool, but it is all of 
purple needle crystals ; and here is red oxide of copper (you 
must not breathe on it as you look, or you may blow some of 
the films of it off the stone), which is simply a woven tissue 
of scarlet silk. However, these finer thread forms are compar- 
atively rare, while the bolder and needle-like crystals occur 
constantly ; so that, I believe, ‘ Needle-crystal’ is the best 
word (the grand one is ‘ Acicular crystal,’ but Sibyl will tell 
you it is all the same, only less easily understood ; and there- 
fore more scientific). Then the Leaf-crystals, as I said, 
form an immense mass of foliated rocks; and the Granular 
crystals, which are of many kinds, form essentially granular, 
or granitic and porphyritic rocks ; and it is always a point of 
more interest to me (and I think will ultimately be to you), 
to consider the causes which force a given mineral to take 
any one of these three general forms, than what the peculiar 
geometrical limitations are, belonging to its own crystals.* 
It is more interesting to me, for instance, to try and find out 
why the red oxide of copper, usually crystallising in eubes or 
octahedrons, makes itself exquisitely, out of its cubes, into 
this red silk in one particular Cornish mine, than what are 
the absolutely necessary angles of the octahedron, which is 
its common form. At all events, that mathematical part of 
crystallography is quite beyond girls’ strength; but these 
questions of the various tempers and manners of crystals are 
not only comprehensible by you, but full of the most curious 
teaching for you. For in the fulfilment, to the best of their 
power, of their adopted form under given circumstances, 
there are conditions entirely resembling those of human vir- 
tue ; and indeed expressible under no term so proper as that 
of the Virtue, or Courage of crystals :—which, if you are not 
afraid of the crystals making you ashamed of yourselves, we 
will try to get some notion of, to-morrow. But it will be a 
bye-lecture, and more about yourselves than the minerals, 
Don’t come unless you like, 


* Note iv. 


THE CRYSTAL ORDERS. 55 


Mary. I'm sure the crystals will make us ashamed of our- 
selves ; but we'll come, for all that. 

L. Meantime, look well and quietly over these needle, or 
thread crystals, and those on the other two tables, with mag- 
nifying glasses, and see what thoughts will come into your 
little heads about them. For the best thoughts are generally 
those which come without being forced, one does not know 
how. And solI hope you will get through your wet day pa- 
tiently. 


LECTURE V. 


CRYSTAL VIRTUES. 


A quiet talk, in the afternoon, by the sunniest window of the Drawings 
room. Present, FLORRIE, ISABEL, MAy, LUCILLA, KATHLEEN, DORA, 
Mary, and some others, who have saved time for the bye-Lecture. 


‘L. So you have really come, like good girls, to be made 
ashamed of yourselves ? 

Dora (very meekly). No, we needn’t be made so; we always 
are. 

L. Well, I believe that’s truer than most pretty speeches : 
but you know, you saucy girl, some people have more reason 
to be so than others. Are you sure everybody is, as well as 
you? 

Tur Grenerat Voice. Yes, yes; everybody. 

L. What! Florrie ashamed of herself ? 

(Ftorrte hides behind the curtain.) 
L. And Isabel ? 
(Isapet hides under the table.) 

L. And May ? 

(May runs into the corner behind the piano.) 

L. And Lucilla ? 

(Luctixa hides her face in her hands.) 

L. Dear, dear ; but this will never do. I shall have to tell 
you of the faults of the crystals, instead of virtues, to put you 
in heart again. 

May (coming out of her corner). Oh! have the crystals faults, 
like us? 

L. Certainly, May. Their best virtues are shown in fight- 
ing their faults. And some have a great many faults; and 
some are very naughty crystals indeed. 

Frorris (from behind her curtain). As naughty as me? 

IsaBeL (peeping from under the table cloth). Or me? 


ORYSTAL VIRTUES. 57 


L. Well, I don’t know. They never forget their syntax, 
children, when once they’ve been taught it. But Ithink some 
of them are, on the whole, worse than any of you. Not that 
it’s amiable of you to look so radiant, all in a minute, on that 
account. 

Dora. Oh! but it’s so much more comfortable. 


(Zverybody seems to recover their spirits. Eclipse of Fior- 
rE and IsaBew terminates. ) 


L. What kindly creatures girls are, after all, to their neigh- 
bours’ failings! I think you may be ashamed of yourselves 
indeed, now, children! Ican tell you, you shall hear of the 
highest crystalline merits that I can think of, to-day : and I 
wish there were more of them; but crystals have a limited, 
though astern, code of morals; and their essential virtues 
are but two ;—the first is to be pure, and the second to be 
well shaped. 

Mary. Pure! Does that mean clear—transparent ? 

L. No; unless in the case of a transparent substance. You 
cannot have a transparent crystal of gold ; but you may have 
a perfectly pure one. 

IsapeL. But you said it was the shape that made things be 
crystals ; therefore, oughtn’t their shape to be their first vir- 
tue, not their second ? 

L. Right, you troublesome mousie. But I call their shape 
only their second virtue, because it depends on time and ac- 
cident, and things which the crystal cannot help. If it is 
cooled too quickly, or shaken, it must take what shape it can ; 
but it seems as if, even then, it had in itself the power of re- 
jecting impurity, if it has crystalline life enough. Here isa 
erystal of quartz, well enough shaped in its way ; but it seems 
to have been languid and sick at heart ; and some white milky 
substance has got into it, and mixed itself up with it, all 
through. It makes the quartz quite yellow, if you hold it up 
to the light, and milky blue on the surface. Here is another, 
broken into a thousand separate facets, and out of all trace- 
able shape; but as pure as a mountain spring. [ like this 
one best. 


58 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


Tue Avuprence. So do I—and I—and I. 

Mary. Would a crystallographer ? 

L. I think so. He would find many more laws curiously 
exemplified in the irregularly grouped but pure crystal. But 
it is a futile question, this of first or second. Purity is in 
most cases a prior, if not a nobler, virtue ; at all events it is 
most convenient to think about it first. 

Mary. But what ought we to think about it? Is there much 
to be thought—I mean, much to puzzle one? 

L. Idon’t know what you call ‘much.’ It is along time 
since I met with anything in which there was little. There’s 
not much in this, perhaps. The crystal must be either dirty 
or clean,—and there’s an end. So it is with one’s hands, and 
with one’s heart—only you can wash your hands without 
changing them, but not hearts, nor crystals. On the whole, 
while you are young, it will be as well to take care that your 
hearts don’t want much washing ; for they may perhaps need 
wringing also, when they do. 


(Audience doubtful and uncomfortable. Lucmxa at last 
takes courage.) 


Luoma. Oh! but surely, sir, we cannot make our hearts 
clean ? 

L. Not easily, Lucilla; so you had better keep them so 
when they are. 

Lucia. When they are! But, sir— 

L. Well? 

Lucia. Sir—surely—are we not told that they are all 
evil ? 

L. Wait a little, Lucilla; that is difficult ground you are 
getting upon ; and we must keep to our crystals, till at least 
we understand what their good and evil consist in; they may 
help us afterwards to some useful hints about our own. I 
said that their goodness consisted chiefly in purity of sub- 
stance, and perfectness of form: but those are rather the 
effects of their goodness, than the goodness itself. The inher- 
ent virtues of the crystals, resulting in these outer conditions, 
might really seem to be best described in the words we should 


CRYSTAL VIRTUES. 59 


use respecting living creatures—‘ force of heart’ and ‘steadi- 
ness of purpose.’ There seem to be in some crystals, from 
the beginning, an unconquerable purity of vital power, and 
strength of crystal spirit. Whatever dead substante, unac- 
ceptant of this energy, comes in their way, is either rejected, 
or forced to take some beautiful subordinate form ; the purity 
of the crystal remains unsullied, and every atom of it bright 
with coherent energy. Then the second condition is, that 
from the beginning of its whole structure, a fine crystal seems 
to have determined that it will be of a certain size and ofa 
certain shape; it persists in this plan, and completes it. 
Here is a perfect crystal of quartz for you. It is of an un- 
usual form, and one which it might seem very difficult to build 
—a pyramid with convex sides, composed of other minor pyra- 
mids. But there is not a flaw in its contour throughout; not 
one of its myriads of component sides but is as bright as a 
jeweller’s facetted work (and far finer, if you saw it close). 
The crystal points are as sharp as javelins; their edges will 
cut glass with a touch. Anything more resolute, consummate, 
determinate in form, cannot be conceived. Here, on the 
other hand, is a crystal of the same substance, in a perfectly 
simple type of form—a plain six-sided prism; but from its 
base to its point,—-and it is nine inches long,—it has never 
for one instant made up its mind what thickness it will have. 
It seems to have begun by making itself as thick as it thought 
possible with the quantity of material at command. Still not 
being as thick as it would like to be, it has clumsily glued on 
more substance at one of its sides. Thenit has thinned itself, 
ina panic of economy; then puffed itself out again; then 
starved one side to enlarge another; then warped itself quite 
out of its first line. Opaque, rough-surfaced, jagged on tht 
edge, distorted in the spine, it exhibits a quite human image 
of decrepitude and dishonour ; but the worst of all the signs 
of its decay and helplessness, is that half-way up, a parasite 
erystal, smaller, but just as sickly, has rooted itself in the side 
of the larger one, eating out a cavity round its root, and then 
growing backwards, or downwards, contrary to the direction 
of the main crystal. Yet I cannot trace the least difference in 


60 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


purity of substance between the first most noble stone, and 
this ignoble and dissolute one. The impurity of the last is 
in its will, or want of will. 

Mary. ‘Oh, if we could but understand the meaning of it 
all ! 

L. We can understand all that is good for us. It is just as 
true for us, as for the crystal, that the nobleness of life de-. 
pends on its consistency,—clearness of purpose,—quiet and 
ceaseless energy. All doubt, and repenting, and botching, 
and retouching, and wondering what it will be best to do 
next, are vice, as well as misery. 

Mary (much wondering). But must not one repent when one 
does wrong, and hesitate when one can’t see one’s way ? 

L. You have no business at all to do wrong; nor to get 
into any way that you cannot see. Your intelligence should 
always be far in advance of your act. Whenever you do not 
know what you are about, you are sure to be doing wrong. 

Katuuren. Oh, dear, but I never know what I am about! 

L. Very true, Katie, but it is a great deal to know, if you 
know that. And you find that you have done wrong after- 
wards; and perhaps some day you may begin to know, or at 
least, think, what you are about. 

IsaseL. But surely people can’t do very wrong if they don’t 
know, can they? I mean, they can’t be very naughty. They 
can be wrong, like Kathleen or me, when we make mistakes ; 
but not wrong in the dreadful way. { can’t express what I 
mean ; but there are two sorts of wrong are there not? 

L. Yes, Isabel; but you will find that the great difference 
is between kind and unkind wrongs, not between meant and 
unmeant wrong. Very few people really mean to do wrong, 
—in a deep sense, none. They only don’t know what they 


are about. Cain did not mean to do wrong when he killed 
Abel. 


(IsaBeL draws a deep breath, and opens her eyes very wide.) 


L. No, Isabel; and there are countless Cains among us 
now, who kill their brothers by the score a day, not only for 
less provocation than Cain had, but for no provocation, —and 


CRYSTAL VIRTUES, 61 


merely for what they can make of their bones,—yet do not 
think they are doing wrong in the least, Then sometimes 
you have the business reversed, as over in America these last 
years, where you have seen Abel resolutely killing Cain, and 
not thinking he is doing wrong. The great difficulty is 
always to open people’s eyes: to touch their feelings, and 
break their hearts, is easy; the difficult thing is to break 
their heads. What does it matter, as long as they remain 
stupid, whether you change their feelings or not? You can- 
not be always at their elbow to tell them what is right: and 
they may just do as wrong as before, or worse ; and their best 
intentions merely make the road smooth for them,—you know 
where, children. For it is not the place itself that is paved 
with them, as people say so often. You can’t pave the bot- 
tomless pit ; but you may the road to it. 

May. Well, but if people do as well as they can see how, 
surely that is the right for them, isn’t it ? 

L. No, May, not a bit of it; right is right, and wrong is 
wrong. It is only the fool who does wrong, and says he ‘ did 
it for the best.’ And if there’s one sort of person in the world 
that the Bible speaks harder of than another, it is fools. Their 
particular and chief way of saying ‘There is no God’ is this, 
of declaring that whatever their ‘public opinion’ may be, is 
right: and that God’s opinion is of no consequence. 

May. But surely nobody can always know what is right? 

L. Yes, you always can, for to-day; and if you do what 
you see of it to-day, you will see more of it, and more clearly, 
_to-morrow. Here, for instance, you children are at school, 
and have to learn French, and arithmetic, and music, and sev- 
eral other such things. That is your ‘right’ for the present ; 
the ‘right’ for us, your teachers, is to see that you learn as 
much as you can, without spoiling your dinner, your sleep, or 
your play ; and that what you do learn, you learn well. You 
all know when you learn with a will, and when you dawdle. 
There’s no doubt of conscience about that, I suppose ? 

Vioter. No; but if one wants to read an amusing book, in- 
stead of learning one’s lesson ? 

L. You don’t call that a ‘ question,’ seriously, Violet? You 


62 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


are then merely deciding whether you will resolutely do 
wrong or not. 

Mary. But, in after life, how many fearful difficulties may 
arise, however one tries to know or to do what is right! 

L. You are much too sensible a girl, Mary, to have felt 
that, whatever you may have seen. A great many of young 
ladies’ difficulties arise from their falling in love with a wrong 
person: but they have no business to let themselves fall in 
love, till they know he is the right one. 

Dora. How many thousands ought he to have a year ? 

L. (disdaining reply). There are, of course, certain crises 
of fortune when one has to take care of oneself, and mind 
shrewdly what one is about. There is never any real doubt 
about the path, but you may have to walk very slowly. 

Mary. And if one is forced to do a wrong thing by some 
one who has authority over you? 

L. My dear, no one can be forced to do a wrong thing, for 
the guilt is in the will: but you may any day be forced to do 
a fatal thing, as you might be forced to take poison ; the re- 
markable law of nature in such cases being, that it is always 
unfortunate you who are poisoned, and not the person who 
gives you the dose. It isa very strange law, but it 7s a law. 
Nature merely sees to the carrying out of the normal opera- 
tion of arsenic. She never troubles herself to ask who gave 
it you. So also you may be starved to death, morally as 
well as physically, by other people’s faults. You are, on the 
whole, very good children sitting here to-day ;—do you think 
that your goodness comes all by your own contriving? or. 
that you are gentle and kind because your dispositions are 
naturally more angelic than those of the poor girls who are 
playing, with wild eyes, on the dustheaps in the alleys of our 
great towns; and who will one day fill their prisons,—or, 
better, their graves? Heaven only knows where they, and 
we who have cast them there, shall stand at last. But the 
main judgment question will be, I suppose, for all of us, ‘ Did 
you keep a good heart through it?’ What you were, others 
may answer for ;—what you tried to be, you must answer for, 
yourself. Was the heart pure and true—tell us that ? 


CRYSTAL VIRTUES. 63 


And so we come back to your sorrowful question, Lucilla, 
which I put aside a little ago. You would be afraid to an- 
swer that your heart was pure and true, would not you? 

Lucitna. Yes, indeed, sir. 

L. Because you have been taught that it is all evil—‘ only 
evil continually.’ Somehow, often as people say that, they 
never seem, to me, to believe it? Do you really believe it? 

Lucia. Yes, sir; I hope so. 

L. That you have an entirely bad heart? 

Luoria (a little uncomfortable at the substitution of the mono- 
syllable for the dissyllable, nevertheless persisting in her ortho- 
doxy). Yes, sir. 

L. Florrie, Iam sure you are tired ; I never like you to 
stay when you are tired ; but, you know, you must not play 
with the kitten while we're talking. ‘ 

Frorrte. Oli! but Pm not tired ; and I’m only nursing her. 
She'll be asleep in my lap directly. 

L. Stop! that puts me in mind of something I had to show 
you, about minerals that are lke hair. I want a hair out of 
Tittie’s tail. 

Fiorriz (quite rude, in her surprise, even to the point of re- 
peating expressions). Out of Tittie’s tail ! 

L. Yes; a brown one: Lucilla, you can get at the tip of it 
nicely, under Florrie’s arm ; just pull one out for me. 

Louciria. Oh! but, sir, it will hurt her so! 

L. Never mind; she can’t scratch you while -Florrie is 
holding her. Now that I think of it, you had better pull out 
two. 

Lvermza. But then she may scratch Florrie! and it will 
hurt her so, sir! if you only want brown hairs, wouldn’t two 
of mine do? 

L. Would you really rather pull out your own than Tittie’s? 

Lucitia. Oh, of course, if mine will do. 

LL. But that’s very wicked, Lucilla! 

Lucia. Wicked, sir ? 

L. Yes; if your heart was not so bad, you would much 
rather pull all the cat’s hairs out, than one of your own. 

Lucia. Oh! but sir, I didn’t mean bad, like that. 


64 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


L. I believe, if the truth were told, Lucilla, you would like 
to tie a kettle to Tittie’s tail, and hunt her round the play- 
ground. 

Lucia. Indeed, I should not, sir. 

L. That’s not true, Lucilla ; you know it cannot be. 

Luctrza. Sir? 

L. Certainly it is not;—how can you possibly speak any 
truth out of such a heart as you have? It is wholly deceitful. 

Lvcrtia. Oh! no, no; I don’t mean that way; I don’t mean 
that it makes me tell hes, quite out. 

L. Only that it tells hes within you? 

Luca. Yes. 

L. Then, outside of it, you know what is true, and say so; 
and I may trust the outside of your heart ; but within, it is 
all foul ahd false. Is that the way ? 

Lucitua. I suppose so: I don’t understand it, quite. 

L. There is no occasion for understanding it; but do you 
feel it? Are you sure that your heart is deceitful above all 
things, and desperately wicked ? 

Lucia (much relieved by finding herself among phrases with 
which she is acquainted). Yes, sir. I’m sure of that. 

L. (pensively). I'm sorry for it, Lucilla, 

Lvemxs. So am I, indeed. 

L. What are you sorry with, Lucilla? 

Lucitia. Sorry with, sir? 

L. Yes ; I mean, where do you feel sorry? in your feet ? 

Lucia (laughing a little). No, sir, of course. 

L. In your shoulders, then? 

Lucius. No, sir. 

L. You are sure of that? Because, I fear, sorrow in the 
shoulders would not be worth much. 

Luciiia. I suppose I feel it in my heart, if I really am 
sorry. 

L. If you really are! Do you mean to say that you are 
sure you are utterly wicked, and yet do not care? 

Luciiia. No, indeed ; I have cried about it often. 

L. Well, then, you are sorry in your heart? 

Luciiua. Yes, when the sorrow is worth anything. 


CRYSTAL VIRTUES. 65 


L. Even if it be not, it cannot be anywhere else but there. 
It is not the crystalline lens of your eyes which is sorry, when 
you cry? 

Lucius. No, sir, of course. 

L. Then, have you two hearts; one of which is wicked, and 
the other grieved? or is one side of it sorry for the other side? 

Lucia (weary of cross-examination, and a little vexed). 
Indeed, sir, you know I can’t understand it ; but you know 
how it is written—‘another law in my members, warring 
against the law of my mind.’ 

L. Yes, Lucilla, I know how it is written; but I do not see 
that it will help us to know that, if we neither understand 
what is written, nor feel it. And you will not get nearer to 
the meaning of one verse, if, as soon as you are puzzled by it, 
you escape to another, introducing three new words—‘ law,’ 
‘members,’ and ‘mind’; not one of which you at present 
know the meaning of; and respecting which, you probably 
never will be much wiser ; since men like Montesquieu and 
Locke have spent great part of their lives in endeavouring to 
explain two of them. 

Lucitua. Oh! please, sir, ask somebody else. 

L. If I thought anyone else could answer better than you, 
Lucilla, I would ; but suppose I try, instead, myself, to ex- 
plain your feelings to you ? 

Lucia. Oh, yes; please do. 

L. Mind, I say your ‘feelings,’ not your ‘belief.’ For I 
cannot undertake to explain anybody’s beliefs. Still I must 
try a little, first, to explain the belief also, because I want to 
draw it to some issue. As far as I understand what you say, 
or any one else, taught as you have been taught, says, on 
this matter,—you think that there is an external goodness, a 
whited-sepulchre kind of goodness, which appears beautiful 
outwardly, but is within full of uncleanness: a deep secret 
guilt, of which we ourselves are not sensible ; and which can 
only be seen by the Maker of us all. (Approving murmurs 
from audience.) 

L. Is it not so with the body as well as the soul ? 


(Looked notes of iiterrogation.) 


66 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


L. A skull, for instance, is not a beautiful thing ? 
(Grave faces, signifying ‘ Certainly not,’ and * What next ? ’S 
L. And if you all could see in each other, with clear eyes, 


whatever God sees beneath those fair faces of yours, you 
would not like it? 


(Murmured ‘ No’s.’) 
L. Nor would it be good for you ? 
( Silence.) 


L. The probability being that what God does not allow you 
to see, He does not wish you to see ; nor even to think of? 


(Silence prolonged. ) 


L. It would not at all be good for you, for instance, when- 
ever you were washing your faces, and braiding your hair, to 
be thinking of the shapes of the jawbones, and of the carti- 
lage of the nose, and of the jagged sutures of the scalp ? 


(Resolutely whispered No’s.) 


L. Still less, to see through a clear glass the daily pro- 
cesses of nourishment and decay ? 


(No.) 


L. Still less if instead of merely inferior and preparatory 
conditions of structure, as in the skeleton,—or inferior offices 
of structure, as in operations of life and death,—there were 
actual disease in the body; ghastly and dreadful. You would 
try to cure it ; but having taken such measures as were neces- 
sary, you would not think the cure likely to be promoted by 
perpetually watching the wounds, or thinking of them. On 
the contrary, you would be thankful for every moment of for- 
getfulness: as, in daily health, you must be thankful that 
your Maker has veiled whatever is fearful in your frame under 
a sweet and manifest beauty ; and has made it your duty, and 
your only safety, to rejoice in that, both in yourself and in 
others :—not indeed concealing, or refusing to believe in sick- 
ness, if it come ; but never dwelling on it. 

Now, your wisdom and duty touching soul-sickness are just 
the same. Ascertain clearly what is wrong with you; and so 


ORYSTAL VIRTUES. 67 


far as you know any means of mending it, take those means, 
and have done: when you are examining yourself, never call 
yourself merely a ‘sinner,’ that is very cheap abuse; and ut- 
terly useless. You may even get to like it, and be proud of 
it. But call yourself a liar, a coward, a sluggard, a glutton, 
or an evil-eyed jealous wretch, if you indeed find yourself to 
be in any wise any of these. Take steady means to check 
yourself in whatever fault you have ascertained, and justly ac- 
cused yourself of. And as soon as you are in active way of 
mending, you will be no more inclined to moan over an unde- 
fined corruption. For the rest, you will find it less easy to 
uproot faults, than to choke them by gaining virtues. Do not 
think of your faults; still less of others’ faults: in every 
person who comes near you, look for what is good and strong: 
honour that ; rejoice in it ; and, as you can, try to imitate it : 
and your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their 
‘time comes. If, on looking back, your whole life should 
seem rugged as a palm tree stem ; still, never mind, so long 
as it has been growing; and has its grand green shade of 
leaves, and weight of honied fruit, at top. And even if you 
cannot find much good in yourself at last, think that it does 
not much matter to the universe either what you were, or 
are; think how many people are noble, if you cannot be ; and 
rejoice in thei7 nobleness. An immense quantity of modern 
confession of sin, even when honest, is merely a sickly ego- 
tism ; which will rather gloat over its own evil, than lose the 
centralisation of its interest in itself. 

Mary. But then, if we ought to forget ourselves so much, 
how did the old Greek proverb ‘Know thyself’ come to be so 
highly esteemed ? 

L. My dear, it is the proverb of proverbs; Apollo’s prov- 
erb, and the sun’s ;—but do you think you can know yourself 
by looking into yourself? Never. You can know what you 
are, only by looking out of yourself. Measure your own 
powers with those of others; compare your own interests 
with those of others; try to understand what you appear to 
them, as wel! as what they appear to you ; and judge of your- 
‘selves, in all things, relatively and subordinately ; not posi- 


68 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


tively.: starting always with a wholesome conviction of the 
probability that there is nothing particular about you. For 
instance, some of you perhaps think you can write poetry. 
Dwell on your own feelings and doings :—and you will soon 
think yourselves Tenth Muses ; but forget your own feelings ; 
and try, instead, to understand a line or two of Chaucer or 
Dante: and you will soon begin to feel yourselves very fool- 
ish girls—which is much like the fact. | 

So, something which befalls you may seem a great misfort- 
une ;—you meditate over its effects on you personally ; and 
begin to think that it is a chastisement, or a warning, or a 
this or that or the other of profound significance ; and that 
all the angels in heaven have left their business for a little 
while, that they may watch its effects on your mind. But 
give up this egotistic indulgence of your fancy ; examine a 
little what misfortunes, greater a thousandfold, are happen- 
ing, every second, to twenty times worthier persons: and your 
self-consciousness will change into pity and humility ; and 
you will know yourself, so far as to understand that ‘there 
hath nothing taken thee but what is common to man.’ 

Now, Lucilla, these are the practical conclusions which any 
person of sense would arrive at, supposing the texts which re- 
late to the inner evil of the heart were as many, and as prom- 
inent, as they are often supposed to be by careless readers. 
But the way in which common people read their Bibles is just 
like the way that the old monks thought hedgehogs ate 
_ grapes. They rolled themselves (it was said), over and over, 
where the grapes lay on the ground. What fruit stuck to 
their spines, they carried off, and ate. So your hedgehoggy 
readers roll themselves over and over their Bibles, and declare 
that whatever sticks to their own spines is Scripture ; and 
that nothing else is. But you can only get the skins of the 
texts that way. If you want their juice, you must press them 
in cluster. Now, the clustered texts about the human heart, 
insist, as a body, not on any inherent corruption in all hearts, 
but on the terrific distinction between the bad and the good 
ones. ‘A good man, out of the good treasure of his heart, 
bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man, out of 


CRYSTAL VIRTUES. 69 


the evil treasure, bringeth forth that which is evil.’ ‘They on 
the rock are they which, in an honest and good heart, having 
heard the word, keep it.’ ‘Delight thyself in the Lord, and 
He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.’ ‘The wicked 
have bent their bow, that they may privily shoot at him that 
is upright in heart.’ And so on; they are countless, to the 
same effect. And, for al) of us, the question is not at all to 
ascertain how much or how little corruption there is in human 
nature ; but to ascertain whether, out of all the mass of that 
nature, we are of the sheep or the goat breed ; whether we 
are people of upright heart, being shot at, or people of 
crooked heart, shooting. And, of all the texts bearing on the 
subject, this, which is a quite simple and practical order, is 
the one you have chiefly to hold in mind. ‘Keep thy heart 
with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.’ 

Luciiia. And yet, how inconsistent the texts seem ! 

L. Nonsense, Lucilla! do you think the universe is bound 
to look consistent to a girl of fifteen? Look up at your own 
room window ;—you can just see it from where you sit. Tm 
glad that it is left open, as it ought to be, in so fine a day. 
But do you see what a black spot it looks, in the sun-lighted 
wall ? 

Lueria. Yes, it looks as black as ink. 

L. Yet you know it is a very bright room when you are 
inside of it ; quite as bright as there is any occasion for it to 
be, that its little lady may see to keep it tidy. Well, it is very 
probable, also, that if you could look into your heart from the 
sun’s point of view, it might appear a very black hole indeed : 
nay, the sun may sometimes think good to tell you that it 
looks so to Him; but He will come into it, and make it very 
cheerful for you, for all that, if you don’t put the shutters up. 
And the one question for you, remember, is not ‘dark or 
light?’ but ‘tidy or untidy ?’ Look well to your sweeping 
and garnishing ; and be sure it is only the banished spirit, or 
some of the seven wickeder ones at his back, who will still 
whisper to you that it is all black. 


LECTURE VI. 


CRYSTAL QUARRELS. 


Full conelave, in Schoolroom. There has been a game at crystallisation im 
the morning, of which various account has to be rendered. In partic- 
ular, everybody has to explain why they were always where they were not 
dntended to be. 


L. (having received and considered the report). You have 
got on pretty well, children: but you know these were easy 
figures you lave been trying. Wait till I have drawn you 
out the plans of some crystals of snow ! 

Mary. I don’t think those will be the most difficult :—they 
are so beautiful that we shall remember our places better ; 
and then they are all regular, and in stars: it is those twisty 
oblique ones we are afraid of. 

L. Read Carlyle’s account of the battle of Leuthen, and 
learn Freidrich’s ‘oblique order.’ You will ‘ get it done for 
once, I think, provided you can march as a pair of compasses 
would.’ But remember, when you can construct the most 
difficult single figures, you have only learned half the game 
—nothing so much as the half, indeed, as the crystals them- 
selves play it. 

Mary. Indeed ; what else is there ? 

L. It is seldom that any mineral crystallises alone. Usually 
two or three, under quite different crystalline laws, form to- 
gether. They do this absolutely without flaw or fault, when 
they are in fine temper: and observe what this signifies. 
It signifies that the two, or more, minerals of different natures 
agree, somehow, between themselves, how much space each 
will want ;—agree which of them shall give away to the other 
at their junction ; or in what measure each will accommodate 
itself to the other’s shape! And then each takes its per- 
mitted shape, and allotted share of space ; yielding, or being 


CRYSTAL QUARRELS, 71 


yielded to, as it builds, till each crystal has fitted itself per- 
fectly and gracefully to its differently-natured neighbour. 
So that, in order to practise this, in even the simplest terms, 
you must divide into two parties, wearing different colours ; 
each much choose a different figure to construct; and you 
must form one of these figures through the other, both going 
on at the same time. 

Mary. I think we may, perhaps, manage it; but I cannot 
at all understand how the crystals do. It seems to imply so 
much preconcerting of plan, and so much giving way to each 
other, as if they really were living. 

L. Yes, it implies both concurrence and compromise, 
regulating all wilfulness of design: and, more curious still, 
the crystals do not always give way toeach other. They show 
exactly the same varieties of temper that human creatures 
might. Sometimes they yield the required place with per- 
fect grace and courtesy ; forming fantastic, but exquisitely 
finished groups: and sometimes they will not yield at all; 
but fight furiously for their places, losing all shape and 
honour, and even their own likeness, in the contest. 

Mary. But is not that wholly wonderful? How is it that 
one never sees it spoken of in books? 

L. The scientific men are all busy in determining the con- 
stant laws under which the struggle takes place ; these indefi- 
nite humours of the elements are of no interest to them. 
And unscientific people rarely give themselves the trouble of 
thinking at all when they look at stones. Not that it is of 
much use to think; the more one thinks, the more one is 
puzzled. 

Mary. Surely it is more wonderful than anything in 
botany ? 

L. Everything has its own wonders; but, given the nature 
of the plant, it is easier to understand what a flower will do, 
and why it does it, than, given anything we as yet know of 
stone-nature, to understand what a crystal will do, and why 
it does it. You at once admit a kindof volition and choice, 
in the flower ; but we are not accustomed to attribute anything 
of the kind to the crystal. Yet there is, in reality, more like- 


72 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


ness to some conditions of human feeling among stones than 
among plants. There is a far greater difference between 
kindly-tempered and ill-tempered crystals of the same mine- 
ral, than between any two specimens of the same flower: and 
the friendships and wars of crystals depend more definitely 
and curiously on their varieties of disposition, than any associ- 
ations of flowers. Here, for instance, is a good garnet, living 
with good mica; one rich red, and the other silver white: 
the mica leaves exactly room enough for the garnet to erystal- 
lise comfortably in; and the garnet lives happily in its little 
white house ; fitted to it, like a pholas in its cell. But here 
are wicked garnets living with wicked mica. See what ruin 
they make of each other! You cannot tell which is which ; 
the garnets look like dull red stains on the crumbling stone. 
By the way, I never could understand, if St. Gothard is a 
real saint, why he can’t keep his garnets in better order. 
These are all under his care; but I suppose there are too 
many of them for him to look after. The streets of Airolo 
are paved with them. 

May. Paved with garnets? 

L. With mica-slate and garnets; I broke this bit out of a 
paving stone. Now garnets and mica are natural friends, 
and generally fond of each other; but you see how they 
quarrel when they are ill brought up. Soitis always. Good 
crystals are friendly with almost all other good crystals, 
however little they chance to see of each other, or how- 
ever opposite their habits may be; while wicked crystals 
quarrel with one another, though they may be exactly alike 
in habits, and see each other continually. And of course the 
wicked crystals quarrel with the good ones. 

IsapeL. Then do the good ones get angry ? 

L. No, never: they attend to their own work and life ; 
and live it as well as they can, though they are always the 
sufferers. Here, for instance, is a rock-crystal of the purest 
race and finest temper, who was born, unhappily for him, in 
bad neighbourhood, near Beaufort in Savoy ; and he has had 
to fight with vile calcareous mud all his life. See here, when he 
was but a child, it came down on him, and nearly buried him; a 


CRYSTAL QUARRELS. 73 


weaker crystal would have died in despair; but he only 
gathered himself together, like Hercules against the serpents, 
and threw a layer of crystal over the clay ; conquered it,— 
imprisoned it,—and lived on. Then, when he was a little 
older, came more clay ; and poured itself upon him here, at 
the side; and he has laid crystal over that, and lived on, in 
his purity. Then the clay came on at his angles, and tried to 
cover them, and round them away; but upon that he threw 
out buttress-crystals at his angles, all as true to his own 
central line as chapels round a cathedral apse ; and clustered 
them round the clay ; and conquered it again. At last the 
clay came on at his summit, and tried to blunt his summit ; but 
he could not endure that for an instant; and left his flanks 
all rough, but pure; and fought the clay at his crest, and 
built crest over crest, and peak over peak, till the clay sur- 
rendered at last ; and here is his summit, smooth and pure, 
terminating a pyramid of alternate clay and crystal, half a 
foot high! 

Laity. Oh, how nice of him! What a dear, brave crystal! 
But I can’t bear to see his flanks all broken, and the clay 
within them. 

L. Yes; it was an evil chance for him, the being born to 
such contention ; there are some enemies so base that even 
to hold them captive is a kind of dishonour. But look, here 
has been quite a different kind of struggle: the adverse 
power has been more orderly, and has fought the pure crystal 
in ranks as firm asitsown. This is not mere rage and im- 
pediment of crowded evil: here is a disciplined hostility ; 
army against army. 

Luy. Oh, but this is much more beautiful! 

L. Yes, for both the elements have true virtue in them; it 
is a pity they are at war, but they war grandly. 

Mary. But is this the same clay as in the other crystal? 

L. I used the word clay for shortness. In both, the enemy 
is really limestone ; but in the first, disordered, and mixed 
with true clay ; while, here, it is nearly pure, and crystallises 
into its own primitive form, the oblique six-sided one, which 
you know: and out of these it makes regiments ; and then 


74 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


squares of the regiments, and so charges the rock crystal 
literally in square against column. 

IsabeL. Please, please, let me see. And what does the 
rock crystal do ? 

L. The rock crystal seems able to do nothing. The calcite 
cuts it through at every charge. Look here,—and here! 
The loveliest crystal in the whole group is hewn fairly inte 
two pieces. 

JsapeL. Oh, dear; but is the calcite harder than the crys- 
tal then ? 

L. No, softer. Very much softer. 

Mary. But then, how can it possibly cut the erystal ? 

L. It did not really cut it, though it passes through it, 
The two were formed together, as I told you; but no one 
knows how. Still, it is strange that this hard quartz has in 
all cases a good-natured way with it, of yielding to every- 
thing else. All sorts of soft things make nests for themselves 
in it; and it never makes a nest for itself in anything. It 
has all the rough outside work ; and every sort of cowardly 
and weak mineral can shelter itself within it. Look; these 
are hexagonal plates of mica; if they were outside of this 
crystal they would break, like burnt paper; but they are 
inside of it,—nothing can hurt them,—the crystal has taken 
them into its very heart, keeping all their delicate edges as 
sharp as if they were under water, instead of bathed in rock. 
Here is a piece of branched silver: you can bend it with a 
touch of your finger, but the stamp of its every fibre is on 
the rock in which it lay, as if the quartz had been as soft as 
wool. 

Liry. Oh, the good, good quartz! But does it never get 
inside of anything ? 

L. As it isa little Irish girl who asks, I may perhaps an- 
swer, without being laughed at, that it gets inside of itself 
sometimes. But I don’t remember seeing quartz make a nest 
for itself in anything else. 

IsapeL. Please, there was something I heard you talking 
about, last term, with Miss Mary. I was at my lessons, but 
I heard something about nests ; and I thought it was birds’ 


CRYSTAL QUARRELS. Ga 


nests; and I couldn't help listening ; and then, I remem- 
ber, it was about ‘nests of quartz in granite.’ I remember, 
because I was so disappointed ! 

L. Yes, mousie, you remember quite rightly ; but I can’t 
tell you about those nests to-day, nor perhaps to-morrow : 
but there’s no contradiction between my saying then, and 
now ; I will show you that there is not, some day. Will you 
trust me meanwhile? 

Isapet. Won't I! 

L. Well, then, look, lastly, at this piece of courtesy in 
quartz ; it is on a small scale, but wonderfully pretty. Here 
is nobly born quartz living with a green mineral, called epi- 
dote ; and they are immense friends. Now, you see, a com- 
paratively large and strong quartz-crystal, and a very weak 
and slender little one of epidote, have begun to grow, close 
by each other, and sloping unluckily towards each other, so 
that they at last meet. They cannot go on growing togeth- 
er; the quartz crystal is five times as thick, and more than 
twenty times as strong,* as the epidote; but he stops at 
once, just in the very crowning moment of his life, when he 
is building his own summit! He lets the pale little film of 
epidote grow right past him ; stopping his own summit for 
it; and he never himself grows any more. 

Liy (after some silence of wonder). But is the quartz never 
wicked then ? 

L. Yes, but the wickedest quartz seems good-natured, com- 
pared to other things. Here are two very characteristic ex- 
amples; one is good quartz, living with good pearlspar, and 
the other, wicked quartz, living with wicked pearlspar. In 
both, the quartz yields to the soft carbonate of iron: but, in 
the first place, the iron takes only what it needs of room ; and 
is inserted into the planes of the rock crystal with such pre- 
cision, that you must break it away before you can tell 
whether it really penetrates the quartz or not; while the 
crystals of iron are perfectly formed, and have a lovely bloom 
on their surface besides. But here, when the two minerals 


* Quartz is not much harder than epidote; the strength is only sup- 
posed to be in some proportion to the squares of the diameters. 


76 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


quarrel, the unhappy quartz has all its surfaces jagged and 
torn to pieces ; and there is not a single iron crystal whose 
shape you can completely trace. But the quartz has the worst 
of it, in both instances. 

Vioter. Might we look at that piece of broken quartz again, 
with the weak little film across it? it seems such a strange 
lovely thing, like the self-sacrifice of a human being. 

L. The self-sacrifice of a human being is not a lovely thing, 
Violet. It is often a necessary and noble thing ; but no form 
nor degree of suicide can be ever lovely. 

Vioter. But self-sacrifice is not suicide! 

L. What is it then ? 

Vioter. Giving up one’s self for another. 

IL. Well; and what do you mean by ‘ giving up one’s self ?’ 

Vioter. Giving up one’s tastes, one’s feelings, one’s time, 
one’s happiness, and so on, to make others happy. 

L. I hope you will never marry anybody, Violet, who ex- . 
pects you to make him happy in that way. 

VioxET (hesitating). In what way ? 

L. By giving up your tastes, and sacrificing your feelings, 
and happiness. 

Viotxer. No, no, I don’t mean that ; but you know, for other 
people, one must. 

L. For people who don’t love you, and whom you know 
nothing about? Be it so; but how does this ‘ giving up’ dif- 
fer from suicide then ? 

Vioter. Why, giving up one’s pleasures is not killing one’s 
self ? 

L. Giving up wrong pleasure is not ; neither is it self-sacri- 
fice, but self-culture. But giving up right pleasure is. If 
you surrender the pleasure of walking, your foot will wither ; 
you may as well cut it off: if you surrender the pleasure of 
seeing, your eyes will soon be unable to bear the light ; you 
may as well pluck them cut. And to maim yourself is partly 
to kill yourself. Do but go on maiming, and you will soon 
slay. 

Vioter. But why do you make me think of that verse ther, 
about the foot and the eye? 


CRYSTAL QUARRELS. 77 


L. You are indeed commanded to cut off and to pluck out, 
if foot or eye offend you; but why should they offend you ? 

Vioter. I don’t know ; I never quite understood that. 

L. Yet it isa sharp order ; one needing to be well under- 
stood if it is to be well obeyed! When Helen sprained her 
ancle the other day, you saw how strongly it had to be band- 
aged : that is to say, prevented from all work, to recover it. 
But the bandage was not ‘ lovely.’ 

Vioter. No, indeed. 

L. And if her foot had been crushed, or diseased, or snake- 
bitten, mstead of sprained, it might have been needful to cut 
it off. But the amputation would not have been ‘lovely.’ 

Vioter. No. 

L. Well, if eye and foot are dead already, and betray you 
—if the light that isin you be darkness, and your feet run 
into mischief, or are taken in the snare,—it is indeed time 
to pluck out, and cut off, I think: but, so crippled, you can 
never be what you might have been otherwise. You enter 
into life, at best, halt or maimed; and the sacrifice is not 
beautiful, though necessary. 

Vioter (after a pause). But when one sacrifices one’s self 
for others? 

L. Why not rather others for you? 

Vioter. Oh! but I couldn’t bear that. 

L. Then why should they bear it? 

Dora (bursting in, indignant). And Thermopyle, and Pro- 
tesilaus, and Marcus Curtius, and Arnold de Winkelried, and 
Iphigenia, and Jephthah’s daughter ? 

L. (sustaining the indignation unmoved). And the Samaritan 
woman's son? 

Dora. Which Samaritan woman’s ? 

L. Read 2 Kings vi. 29. 

Dora (obeys). How horrid! As if we meant anything like 
that ! 

LL. You don’t seem to me to know in the least what you da 
mean, children. What practical difference is there between 
‘that,’ and what you are talking about? The Samaritan chil- 
dren had no voice of their own in the ‘business, it is true ; but 


78 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


neither had Iphigenia: the Greek girl was certainly neither 
boiled, nor eaten; but that only makes a difference in the 
dramatic effect ; not in the principle. 

Dora (biting her lip). Well, then, tell us what we ought to 
mean. Asif you didn’t teach it all to us, and mean it your- 
self, at this moment, more than we do, if you wouldn't be 
tiresome ! 

L. I mean, and have always meant, simply this, Dora ;— 
that the will of God respecting us is that we shall live by each 
other’s happiness, and life; not by each other’s misery, or 
death. Imade you read that verse which so shocked you just 
now, because the relations of parent and child are typical of 
all beautiful human help. A child may have to die for its 
parents ; but the purpose of Heaven is that it shall rather live 
for them ;—that, not by its sacrifice, but by its strength, its 
joy, its force of being, it shall be to them renewal of strength ; 
and as the arrow in the hand of the giant. So it is in all 
other right relations. Men help each other by their joy, not 
by their sorrow. They are not intended to slay themselves 
for each other, but to strengthen themselves for each other. 
And among the many apparently beautiful things which turn, 
through mistaken use, to utter evil, I am not sure but that 
the thoughtlessly meek and self-sacrificing spirit of good men 
must be named as one of the fatallest. They have so often 
been taught that there is a virtue in mere suffering, as such ; 
and foolishly to hope that good may be brought by Heaven 
out of all on which Heaven itself has set the stamp of evil, 
that we may avoid it,—that they accept pain and defeat as if 
these were their appointed portion ; never understanding that 
their defeat is not the less to be mourned because it is more 
fatal to their enemies than to them. The one thing that a 
good man has to do, and to see done, is justice ; he is neither 
to slay himself nor others causelessly : so far from denying 
himself, since he is pleased by good, he is to do his utmost to 
get his pleasure accomplished. And I only wish there were 
strength, fidelity, and sense enough, among the good Engligh- 
men of this day, to render it possible for them to band to- 
gether in a yowed brotherhood, to enforce, by strength of 


ORYSTAL QUARRELS. 19 


heart and hand, the doing of human justice among all who 
came within their sphere. And finally, for your own teach- 
ing, observe, although there may be need for much self-sacri- 
fice and self-denial in the correction of faults of character, 
the moment the character is formed, the self-denial ceases. 
Nothing is really well done, which it costs you pain to do. 

Vioter. But surely, sir, you are always pleased with us 
when we try to please others, and not ourselves ? 

L. My dear child, in the daily course and discipline of right 
life, we must continually and reciprocally submit and sur- 
render in all kind and courteous and affectionate ways: and 
these submissions and ministries to each other, of which you 
all know (none better) the practice and the preciousness, are 
as good for the yielder as the receiver: they strengthen and 
perfect as much as they soften and refine. But the real sacri- 
fice of all our strength, or life, or happiness to others (though 
it may be needed, and though all brave creatures hold their 
lives in their hand, to be given, when such need comes, as 
frankly as a soldier gives his life in battle), is yet always a 
mournful and momentary necessity ; not the fulfilment of the 
continuous law of being. Self-sacrifice which is sought after, 
and triumphed in, is usually foolish ; and calamitous in its 
issue : and by the sentimental proclamation and pursuit of it, 
good people have not only made most of their own lives use- 
less, but the whole framework of their religion so hollow, 
that at this moment, while the English nation, with its lips, 
pretends to teach every man to ‘love his neighbour as him- 
self, with its hands and feet it clutches and tramples like a 
wild beast ; and practically lives, every soul of it that can, on 
other people’s labour. Briefly, the constant duty of every man 
to his fellows is to ascertain his own powers and special gifts ; 
and to strengthen them for the help of others. Do you think 
Titian would have helped the world better by denying him- 
self, and not painting ; or Casella by denying himself, and not 
singing? The real virtue is to be ready to sing the moment 
people ask us ; as he was, even in purgatory. The very word 
‘virtue’ meansnot ‘conduct’ but ‘strength,’ vital energy in 
the heart. Were not you reading about that group of words 


80 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


beginning with V,—vital, virtuous, vigorous, and so on,—in 
Max Muller, the other day, Sibyl? Can’t you tell the others 
about it? 

Srsyz. No, I can’t; will you tell us, please ? 

L. Not now, it is too late. Come to me some idle time 
to-morrow, and I'll tell you about it, if all’s well. But the 
gist of it is, children, that you should at least know two Latin 
words ; recollect that ‘mors’ means death and delaying ; and 
‘vita ’ means life and growing: and try always, not to mor- 
tify yourselves, but to vivify yourselves. 

Vioter. But, then, are we not to mortify our earthly affec- 
tions? and surely we are to sacrifice ourselves, at least in 
God’s service, if not in man’s? 

L. Really, Violet, we are getting too serious. Ive given 
you enough ethics for one talk, I think! Do let us havea 
little play. Lily, what were you so busy about, at the ant-hill 
in the wood, this morning ? 

Lity. Ob, it was the ants.who were busy, notI; I was 
only trying to help them a little. 

L. And they wouldn’t be helped, I suppose ? 

Ly. No, indeed. I can’t think why ants are always so 
tiresome, when one tries to help them! They were carrying 
bits of stick, as fast as they could, through a piece of grass ; 
and pulling and pushing, so hard; and tumbling over and 
over,—it made one quite pity them ;. so I took some of the 
bits of stick, and carried them forward a little, where I 
thought they wanted to put them; ut instead of being 
pleased, they left them directly, and ran about looking quite 
angry and frightened ; and at last ever so many of them got 
up my sleeves, and bit me all over, and I had to come away. 

L. I couldn’t think what you were about. I saw your 
French grammar lying on the grass behind you, and thought 
perhaps you had gone to ask the ants to hear you a French 
verb. d 

Isapet. Ah! but you didn’t, though! 

L. Why not, Isabel? I knew, well enough, Lily couldn't 
learn that verb by herself. 

IsaseL. No; but the ants couldn’t help her. 


ORYSTAL QUARRELS. 81 


L. Are you sure the ants could not have helped you, Lily ? 

Liry (thinking). I ought to have learned something from 
them, perhaps. 

L. But none of them left their sticks to help you through 
the irregular verb? 

Lity. No, indeed. (Laughing, with some others.) 

L. What are you laughing at, children? I cannot see why 
the ants should not have left their tasks to help Lily in her’s, 
—since here is Violet thinking she ought to leave her tasks, 
to help God in His. Perhaps, however, she takes Lily's more 
modest view, and thinks only that ‘He ought to learn some- 
thing from her.’ 


(Tears in VioLer’s eyes.) 


Dora (scarlet). It’s too bad—it’s a shame :—poor Violet ! 

L. My dear children, there’s no reason why one should be 
so red, and the other so pale, merely because you are made 
for a moment to feel the absurdity of a phrase which you 
have been taught to use, in common with half the religious 
world. There is but one way in which man can ever help 
God—that is, by letting God help him: and there is no way 
in which his name is more guiltily taken in vain, than by call- 
ing the abandonment of our own work, the performance of 
His. 

God isakind Father. He sets us all in the places where 
He wishes us to be employed ; and that employment is truly 
‘our Father’s business.’ He chooses work for every creature 
which will be delightful to them, if they do it simply and 
humbly. He gives us always strength enough, and sense 
enough, for what He wants us to do; if we either tire our- 
selves or puzzle ourselves, it is our own fault. And we may 
always be sure, whatever we are doing, that we cannot be 
pleasing Him, if we are not happy ourselves. Now, away 
with you, children ; and be as happy as you can. And when 
you cannot, at least don’t plume yourselves upon pouting, 


LECTURE VII. 


HOME VIRTUES. 
By the fireside, in the Drawing-room. Evening. 

Dora. Now, the curtains are drawn, and the fire’s bright, 
and here’s your arm-chair—and yow're to tell us all about what 
you promised. 

L. All about what? 

Dora. All about virtue. 

Karuiren. Yes, and about the words that begin with V. 

L. I heard you singing about a word that begins with V, 
in the playground, this morning, Miss Katie. 

Karuizen. Me singing? 

May. Oh tell us—tell us. 

L. ‘ Vilikens and his ; 

KaTHLEEN (stopping his mouth). Oh! please don’t. Where 
were you? 

Isaset. P’m sure I wish I had known where he was! We 
lost him among the rhododendrons, and I don’t know where 
he got to; oh, you naughty—naughty—(climbs on his knee). 

Dora. Now, Isabel, we really want to talk. 

L. J don't. 

Dora. Oh, but you must. You promised, you know. 

L. Yes, if all was well; but all’s ill. Im tired, and cross; 
and I won't. 

Dora. You're not a bit tired, and you’re not crosser than 
two sticks ; and we'll make you talk, if you were crosser than 
six. Come here, Egypt; and get on the other side of him. 





(ayer takes up a commanding position near the hearth- 
brush.) 


Dora (reviewing her forces). Now, Lily, come and sit on 
the rug in front. 


(Liry does as she is bid.) 


HOME VIRTUES. 83 


L. (seeing he has no chance against the odds.) Well, well ; 
but I'm really tired. Go and dance a little, first; and let me 
think. 

Dora. No; you mustn’t think. You will be wanting to 
make us think next; that will be tiresome. 

L. Well, go and dance first, to get quit of thinking ; and 
then [ll talk as long as you like. 

Dora. Oh, but we can’t dance to-night. There isn’t time ; 
and we wan't to hear about virtue. 

L. Let me see a little of it first. Dancing is the first of 
girl’s virtues. 

Eayrr. Indeed! And the second ? 

L. Dressing. 

Eeypr. Now, you needn't say that! I mended that tear the 
first thing before breakfast this morning. 

L. I cannot otherwise express the ethical principle, Egypt ; 
whether you have mended your gown or not. 

Dora. Now don’t be tiresome. We really must hear about 
virtue, please ; seriously. 

L. Well. Im telling you about it, as fast as I can. 

Dora. What! the first of girls’ virtues is dancing? 

L. More accurately, it is wishing to dance, and not wishing 
to tease, nor hear about virtue. 

Dora (to Eeypr). Isn’t he cross? 

Eeypr. How many balls must we go to in the season, to be 
perfectly virtuous ? 

L. As many as you can without losing your colour. But 
I did not say you should wish to go to balls. I said you 
should be always wanting to dance. 

Keypr. So we do ; but everybody says it is very wrong. 

L. Why, Egypt, I thought— 


‘There was a lady once, 
That would not be a gueen,—that would she not, 
For all the mud in Egypt.’ 


You were complaining the other day of having to go out a 
great deal oftener than you liked. 


S4 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


Eaypr. Yes, so I was; but then, it isn’t to dance. There’s 
no room to dance : it’s-—(/ausing to consider what it is for). 

L. It is only to be seen, I suppose. Well, there’s no harm 
in that. Girls ought to like to be seen. 

Dora (her eyes flashing). Now, you don’t mean that; and 
you're too provoking ; and we won’t dance again, for a month. 

L. It will answer every purpose of revenge, Dora, if you 
only banish me to the library ; and dance by yourselves: but 
I don’t think Jessie and Lily will agree to that. You like me 
to see you dancing, don’t you Lily? 

Iity. Yes, certainly,—when we do it rightly. 

L. And besides, Miss Dora, if young ladies really do not 
want to be seen, they should take care not to let their eyes 
flash when they dislike what people say : and, more than that, 
it is all nonsense from beginning to end, about not want- 
ing to be seen. I don’t know any more tiresome flower in the 
borders than your especially ‘modest’ snowdrop ; which one 
always has to stoop down and take all sorts of tiresome trou- 
ble with, and nearly break its poor little head off, before you 
can see it; and then, half of it is not worth seeing. Gurls 
should be like daisies ; nice and white, with an edge of red, 
if you look close ; making the ground bright wherever they 
are ; knowing simply and quietly that they do it, and are 
meant to do it, and that it would be very wrong if they didn’t 
do it. Not want to be seen, indeed! How long were you in 
doing your back hair, this afternoon, Jessie ? 


(Jessin not immediately answering, Dora comes to her assist- 
ance.) 


Dora. Not above three-quarters of an hour, I think, Jess? 

JESSIE (putting her finger up). Now, Dorothy, you needn't 
talk, you know! 

L. I know she needn’t, Jessie ; I shall ask her about those 
dark plaits presently. (Dora looks round to see if there is any 
way open for retreat.) But never mind; it was worth the 
time, whatever it was; and nobody will ever mistake that 
golden wreath for a chignon: but if you don’t want it to be 
seen, you had better wear a cap. 


HOME VIRTUES. 85 


Jessie. Ah, now, are you really going to do nothing but 
play? And we all have been thinking, and thinking, all day ; 
and hoping you would tell us things ; and now— ! 

L. And now I am telling you things, and true things, and 
things good for you; and you won’t believe me. You might 
as well have let me go to sleep at once, as I wanted to. 


(Endeavours again to make himself comfortable.) 


Tsapet. Oh, no, no, you sha’n’t go to sleep, you naughty— 
Kathleen, come here. 

L. (knowing what he has to expect if KatHiEEN comes). Get 
away, Isabel, you’re too heavy. (Sitting up.) What have I 
been saying ? 

Dora. I do believe he has been asleep all the time! You 
never heard anything like the things you’ve been saying. 

L. Perhaps not. If you have heard them, and anything 
like them, it is all I want. 

Eeypr. Yes, but we don’t understand, and you know we 
don’t; and we want to. 

L. What did I say first ? 

Dora. That the first virtue of girls was wanting to go to 
balls. 

L. I said nothing of the kind. 

Jesstz. ‘Always wanting to dance,’ you said. 

L. Yes, and that’s true. Their first virtue is to be intensely 
happy ;—so happy that they don’t know what to do with them- 
selves for happiness,—and dance, instead of walking. Don’t 
you recollect ‘ Louisa,’ 


‘No fountain from a rocky cave 
H’er tripped with foot so free ; 
She seemed as happy as a wave 
That dances on the sea.’ 


A girl is always like that, when everything’s right with her. 
Viotet. But, surely, one must be sad sometimes ? 
L. Yes, Violet ; and dull sometimes, and stupid sometimes, 
and cross sometimes. What must be, must; but it is always 


86 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


either our own fault, or somebody else’s. The last and worst 
thing that can be said of a nation is, that it has made itg 
young girls sad, and weary. 

May. But I am sure I bave hearda great many good people 
speak against dancing ? 

L. Yes, May; but it does not follow they were wise as well 
as good. I suppose they think Jeremiah liked better to have 
to write Lamentations for his people, than to have to write 
that promise for them, which everybody seems to hurry past, 
that they may get on quickly to the verse about Rachel weep- 
ing for her children ; though the verse they pass is the counter- 
blessing to that one: ‘Then shall the virgin rejoice in the 
dance ; and both young men and old together; and I will 
turn their mourning into joy.’ 


(The children get very serious, but look at each other, as if 
pleased.) 


Mary. They understand now: but, do you know what you 
said next? 

L. Yes ; I was not more than half asleep. I said their sec- 
ond virtue was dressing. 

Mary. Well! what did you mean by that ? 

L. What do you mean by dressing? 

Mary. Wearing fine clothes. 

L. Ah! there’s the mistake. J mean wearing plain ones. 

Mary. Yes, I daresay! but that’s not what girls understand 
by dressing, you know. 

L. I can’t help that. If they understand by dressing, buy- 
ing dresses, perhaps they also understand by drawing, buying 
pictures. But when I hear them say they can draw, I under- 
stand that they can make a drawing; and when I hear them 
say they can dress, I understand that they can make a dress 
and—which is quite as difficult—wear one. 

Dora. Pm not sure about the making ; for the wearing, we 
can all wear them-—out, before anybody expects it. 

Keypr (aside, to L., piteously). Indeed I have mended that 
torn flounce quite neatly ; look if I haven't! 

L. (aside, to Kaypr). All right; don’t be afraid. (Aloud to 


HOME VIRTUES. 87 


Dora.) Yes, doubtless ; but you know that is only a slow way 


of undressing. 
Dora. Then, we are all to learn dress-making, are we ? 


L. Yes; and always to dress yourselves beautifully—not 
finely, unless on occasion ; but then very finely and beauti- 
fully too. Also, you are to dress as many other people as you 
can; and to teach them how to dress, if they don’t know ; 
and to consider every ill-dressed woman or child whom 
you see anywhere, as a personal disgrace ; and to get at them, 
somehow, until everybody is as beautifully dressed as birds. 


(Silence ; the children drawing their breaths hard, as %f 
they had come from under a shower bath.) 


L (seeing objections begin to express themselves in the eyes). 
Now you needn’t say you can’t; for you can: and it’s what 
you were meant to do, always; and to dress your houses, and 
your gardens, too; and to do very little else, I believe, ex- 
cept singing ; and dancing, as we said, of course ; and—one 
thing more. 

Dora. Our third and last virtue, I suppose ? 

L. Yes ; on Violet’s system of triplicities. 

Dora. Well, we are prepared for anything now. What is it? 

L. Cooking. 

Dora. Cardinal, indeed! If only Beatrice were here with 
her seyen handmaids, that she might see what a fine eighth 
we had found for her! | 

Mary. And the interpretation ? What does ‘ cooking’ mean ? 

L. It means the knowledge of Medea, and of Circe, and of 
Calypso, and of Helen, and of Rebekah, and of the Queen of 
Sheba. It means the knowledge of all herbs, and fruits, and 
balms, and spices; and of all that is healing and sweet in 
fields end groves, and savoury in meats; it means careful- 
ness, and inventiveness, and watchfulness, and willingness, 
and readiness of appliance; it means the economy of your 
ereat-grandmothers, and the science of modern chemists ; it 
means much tasting, and no wasting; it means Enelish 
thoroughness, and French art, and Arabian hospitality; and 
it means, in fine, that you are to be perfectly and always, 


88 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


‘ladies ’"—‘ loaf-givers ;’ and, as you are to see, imperatively, 
that everybody has something pretty to put on,—so you are 
to see, yet more imperatively, that everybody has something 
nice to eat. 


(Another pause, and long drawn breath.) 


Dora (slowly recovering herself) to Eayer. We had better 
have let him go to sleep, I think, after all! 

L. You had better let the younger ones go to sleep now: 
for I haven’t half done. 

IsaseL (panic-struck). Oh! please, please! just one quarter 
of an hour. 

L. No, Isabel; I cannot say what I’ve got to say, in a 
quarter of an hour; and it is too hard for you, besides :— 
you would be lying awake, and trying to make it out, half 
the night. That will never do. 

Isapet. Oh, please ! 

L. It would please me exceedingly, mousie: but there are 
times when we must both be displeased ; more’s the pity. 
Lily may stay for half an hour, if she likes. 

LIiy. I can’t; because Isey never goes to sleep, if she is 
waiting for me to come. 

Isaset. Oh, yes, Lily; I'll go to sleep to-night, I will, in- 
deed. 

Lity. Yes, it’s very likely, Isey, with those fine round eyes! 
(To L.) You'll tell me something of what you’ve been saying, 
to-morrow, won't you? 

L. No, I won't, Lily. You must choose. It’s only in Miss 
Edgeworth’s novels that one can do right, and have one’s 
cake and sugar afterwards, as well (not that I consider the 
dilemma, to-night, so grave). 

(Liny, sighing, takes Isapet’s hand.) 

Yes, Lily dear, it will be better, in the outcome of it, so, 
than if you were to hear all the talks that ever were talked, 
and all the stories that ever were told. Good night. 


(The door leading to the condemned cells of the Dormitory 
closes on Liny, Isapet, Foret, and other diminutive 
and submissive victims.) 


HOME VIRTUES. 89 


Jessie (afler a pause). Why, I thought you were so fond 
of Miss Edgeworth ! 

L. So lam; and so you ought all to be. I can read her 
over and over again, without ever tiring; there’s no one 
whose every page is so full, and so delightful; no one who 
brings you into the company of pleasanter or wiser people ; 
no one who tells you more truly how to do right. And it is 
very nice, in the midst of a wild world, to have the very ideal 
of poetical justice done always to one’s hand :—to have 
everybody found out, who tells lies ; and everybody decorated 
with a red riband, who doesn’t ; and to see the good Laura, 
who gaye away her half sovereign, receiving a grand ovation 
from an entire dinner party disturbed for the purpose ; and 
poor, dear, little Rosamond, who chooses purple jars instead 
of new shoes, left at last without either her shoes or her 
bottle. But it isn’t life: and, in the way children might easily 
understand it, it isn’t morals. 

Jesse. How do you mean we might understand it? 

L. You might think Miss Edgeworth meant that the right 
was to be done mainly because one was always rewarded for 
doing it. It is an injustice to her to say that: her heroines 
always do right simply for its own sake, as they should ; and 
her examples of conduct and motive are wholly admirable. 
But her representation of events is false and misleading. 
Her good characters never are brought into the deadly trial 
of goodness,—the doing right, and suffering for it, quite 
finally. And that is life, as God arranges it. ‘Taking up 
one’s cross’ does not at all mean having ovations at dinner 
parties, and being put over everybody else’s head. 

Dora. But what does it mean then? ‘That is just what we 
couldn’t understand, when you were telling us about not 
sacrificing ourselves, yesterday. | 

L. My dear, it means simply that you are to go the road 
which you see to be the straight one; carrying whatever you 
find is given you to carry, as well and stoutly as you can; 
without making faces, or calling people to come and look at 
you. Above all, you are neither to load, nor unload, your- 
self; nor cut your cross to your own liking. Some people 


90 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


think it would be better for them to have it large ; and many, 
that they could carry it much faster if it were small; and 
even those who like it largest are usually very particular 
about its being ornamental, and made of the best ebony. But 
all that you have really to do is to keep your back as straight 
as you can; and not think about what is upon it—above all, 
not to boast of what is upon it. The real and essential mean- 
ing of ‘ virtue’ isin that straightness of back. Yes; you may 
laugh, children, but it is. You know I was to tell about the 
words that began with V. Sibyl, what does ‘virtue’ mean, 
literally ? 

Srtpyt. Does it mean courage ? 

L. Yes; but a particular kind of courage. It means cour- 
age of the nerve; vital courage. That first syllable of it, if 
you look in Max Miiller, you will find really méans ‘ nerve,’ 
and from it come ‘vis,’ and ‘vir,’ and ‘virgin’ (through vi- 
reo), and the connected word ‘ virga’—‘a rod ;’—the green 
rod, or springing bough of a tree, being the type of perfect 
human strength, both in the use of it in the Mosaic story, 
when it becomes a serpent, or strikes the rock ; or when 
Aaron’s bears its almonds; and in the metaphorical expres- 
sions, the ‘Rod out of the stem of Jesse,’ and the ‘Man 
whose name is the Branch, and so on. And the essential 
idea of real virtue is that of a vital human strength, which 
instinctively, constantly, and without motive, does what is 
right. You must train men to this by habit, as you would 
the branch of a tree ; and give them instincts and manners 
(or morals) of purity, justice, kindness, and courage. Once 
rightly trained, they act as they should, irrespectively of all 
motive, of fear, or of reward. It is the blackest sign of 
putrescence in a national religion, when men speak as if it 
were the only safeguard of conduct; and assume that, but 
for the fear of being burned, or for the hope of being re- 
warded, everybody would pass their lives in lying, stealing, 
and murdering. I think quite one of the notablest historical 
events of this century (perhaps the very notablest), was that 


council of clergymen, horror-struck at the idea of any dimi- 
nution in our dread of hell, at which the last of English 


HOME VIRTUES. 91 


clergymen whom one would have expected to see in such a 
function, rose as the devil’s advocate ; to tell us how impos- 
sible it was we could get on without him. 

Vioter (after a pause). But, surely, if people weren’t 
afraid—(hesitates again). 

L. They should be afraid of doing wrong, and of that only, 
my dear. Otherwise, if they only don’t do wrong for fear of 
being punished, they have done wrong in their hearts, al- 
ready. 

Vioter. Well, but surely, at least one ought to be afraid 
of displeasing God ; and one’s desire to please Him should 
be one’s first motive ? 

L. He never would be pleased with us, if it were, my dear. 
When a father sends his son out into the world—suppose as 
an apprentice—fancy the boy’s coming home at night, and 
saying, ‘Father, I could have robbed the till to-day ; but. 
I didn’t, because I thought you wouldn’t like it.’ Do you 
think the father would be particularly pleased ? 


(VrIoLET is silent.) 


He would answer, would he not, if he were wise and good, 
‘My boy, though you had no father, you must not rob tills’? 
And nothing is ever done so as really to please our Great 
Father, unless we would also have done it, though we had 
had no Father to know of it. . 

Vioter (after long pause). But, then, what continual 
threatenings, and promises of reward there are ! 

L. And how vain both! with the Jews, and with all of us. 
But the fact is, that the threat and promise are simply state- 
ments of the Divine law, and of its consequences. The fact 
is truly told you,—make what use you may of it: and as col- 
lateral warning, or encouragement, or comfort, the knowledge 
of future consequences may often be helpful to us; but 
helpful chiefly to the better state when we can act without 
reference to them. And there’s no measuring the poisoned 
influence of that notion of future reward on the mind of 
Christian Europe, in the early ages. Half the monastic sys- 
tem rose out of that, acting on the occult pride and ambition 


92 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


of good people (as the other half of it came of their follies 
and misfortunes). There is always a considerable quantity of 
pride, to begin with, in what is called ‘ giving one’s self to 
God.’ As if one had ever belonged to anybody else! 

Dora. But, surely, great good has come out of the monastic 
system—our books,—our sciences—all saved by the monks? 

L. Saved from what, my dear? From the abyss of misery 
and ruin which that false Christianity allowed the whole 
active world to live in. When it had become the principal 
amusement, and the most admired art, of Christian men, to 
cut one another’s throats, and burn one another’s towns; of 
course the few feeble or reasonable persons left, who desired 
quiet, safety, and kind fellowship, got into cloisters ; and the 
gentlest, thoughtfullest, noblest men and women shut them- 


selves up, precisely where they could be of least use. They 


are very fine things, for us painters, now,—the towers and 
white arches upon the tops of the rocks; always in places 
where it takes a day's climbing to get at them; but the 
intense tragi-comedy of the thing, when one thinks of it, is 
unspeakable. All the good people of the world getting 
themselves hung up out of the way of mischief, like Bailie 
Nicol Jarvie ;—poor little lambs, as it were, dangling there 
for the sign of the Golden Fleece; or like Socrates in his 
basket in the ‘Clouds’! (I must read you that bit of 
Aristophanes again, by the way.) And believe me, children, 
I am no warped witness, as far as regards monasteries ; or if 
I am, it is in their favour. I have always had a strong lean- 
ing that way; and have pensively shivered with Augustines 
at St. Bernard ; and happily made hay with Franciscans at 
Fesolé ; and sat silent with Carthusians in their little gardens, 
south of Florence ; and mourned through many a day-dream, 
at Melrose and Bolton. But the wonder is always to me, not 
how much, but how little, the monks have, on the whole, 
done, with all that leisure, and all that good-will! What 
nonsense monks characteristically wrote ;—what little progresg 
they made in the sciences to which they devoted themselves 
as a duty,—medicine especially ;—and, last and worst, what 
depths of degradation they can sometimes see one another, 


was 


HOME VIRTUES. 93 


and the population round them, sink into; without either 
doubting their system, or reforming it! 

(Seeing questions rising to lips.) Hold your little tongues, 
children ; it’s very late, and youll make me forget what Ive 
to say. Fancy yourselves in pews, for five minutes. 'There’s 
one point of possible good in the conventual system, which 
is always attractive to young girls; and the idea is a very 
dangerous one ;—the notion of a merit, or exalting virtue, 
consisting in a habit of meditation on the ‘things above,’ 
or things of the next world. Now it is quite true, that a 
person of beautiful mind, dwelling on whatever appears 
to them most desirable and lovely in a possible future 
will not only pass their time pleasantly, but will even ac- 
quire, at last, a vague and wildly gentle charm of manner 
and feature, which will give them an air of peculiar sanctity 
in the eyes of others. Whatever real or apparent good there 
may be in this result, I want you to observe, children, that 
we have no real authority for the reveries to which it is 
owing. We are told nothing distinctly of the heavenly 
world ; except that it will be free from sorrow, and pure 
from sin. What is said of pearl gates, golden floors, and the 
like, is accepted as merely figurative by religious enthusiasts 
themselves ; and whatever they pass their time in conceiving, 
whether of the happiness of risen souls, of their intercourse, 
or of the appearance and employment of the heavenly 
powers, is entirely the product of their own imagination ; and 
as completely and distinctly a work of fiction, or romantic 
invention, as any novel of Sir Walter Scott’s. That the 
romance is founded on religious theory or doctrine ;—that no 
disagreeable or wicked persons are admitted into the story ; 
—and that the inventor fervently hopes that some portion of 
it may hereafter come true, does not in the least alter the 
real nature of the effort or enjoyment. 

Now, whatever indulgence may be granted to amiable 
people for pleasing themselves in this innocent way, it is 
beyond question, that to seclude themselves from the rough 
duties of life, merely to write religious romances, or, as in 
most cases, merely to dream them, without taking so much 


94 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


trouble as is implied in writing, ought not to be received as 
an act of heroic virtue. But, observe, even in admitting 
thus much, I have assumed that the fancies are just and 
beautiful, though fictitious. Now, what right have any of 
us to assume that our own fancies will assuredly be either 
the one or the other? That they delight us, and appear 
lovely to us, is no real proof of its not being wasted time to 
form them: and we may surely be led somewhat to distrust 
our judgment of them by observing what ignoble imagina- 
tions have sometimes sufficiently, or even enthusiastically, 
occupied the hearts of others. The principal source of the 
spirit of religious contemplation is the East ; now I have here 
in my hand a Byzantine image of Christ, which, if you will 
look at it seriously, may, I think, at once and for ever render 
you cautious in the indulgence of a merely contemplative 
habit of mind. Observe, it is the fashion to look at such a 
thing only asa piece of barbarous art; that is the smallest 


part of its interest. What I want you to see, is the baseness 


and falseness of a religious state of enthusiasm, in which 
such a work could be dwelt upon with pious pleasure. ‘That 
a figure, with two small round black beads for eyes ; a gilded 
face, deep cut into horrible wrinkles; an open gash for a 
mouth, and a distorted skeleton for a body, wrapped about, 
to make it fine, with striped enamel of blue and gold ;—that 
such a figure, I say, should ever have been thought helpful 
towards the conception of a Redeeming Deity, may make 
you, I think, very doubtful, even of the Divine approval,— 
much more of the Divine inspiration,—of religious reverie in 
general. You feel, doubtless, that your own idea of Christ 
would be something very different from this ; but in what 
does the difference consist? Not in any more divine author- 
ity in your imagination ; but in the intellectual work of six 
intervening centuries ; which, simply, by artistic discipline, 
has refined this crude conception for you, and filled you, 
partly with an innate sensation, partly with an acquired 
knowledge, of higher forms,—which render this Byzantine 
crucifix as horrible to you, as it was pleasing to its maker. 
More is required to excite your fancy ; but your fancy is of 


HOME VIRTUES. 95 


no more authority than his was: and a point of national art- 
skill is quite conceivable, in which the best we can do now 
will be as offensive to the religious dreamers of the more 
highly cultivated time, as this Byzantine crucifix is to you. 

Mary. But surely, Angelico will always retain his power 
over everybody ? 

L. Yes, I should think, always; as the gentle words of a 
child will: but you would be much surprised, Mary, if you 
thoroughly took the pains to analyse, and had the perfect 
means of analysing, that power of Angelico,—to discover its 
real sources. Of course it is natural, at first, to attribute it 
to the pure religious fervour by which he was inspired ; but 
do you suppose Angelico was really the only monk, in all the 
Christian world of the middle ages, who laboured, in art, with 
a sincere religious enthusiasm ? 

Mary. No, certainly not. 

L. Anything more frightful, more destructive of all relig- 
ious faith whatever, than such a supposition, could not be. 
And yet, what other monk ever produced such work? I have 
myself examined carefully upwards of two thousand illumin- 
ated missals, with especial view to the discovery of any evi- 
dence of a similar result upon the art, from the monkish 
devotion ; and utterly in vain. 

Mary. But then, was not Fra Angelico a man of entirely 
separate and exalted genius ? 

L. Unquestionably ; and granting him to be that, the pecul- 
iar phenomenon in his art is, to me, not its loveliness, but its 
weakness. The effect of ‘inspiration,’ had it been real, on a 
man of consummate genius, should have been, one would 
have thought, to make everything that he did faultless and 
strong, no less than lovely. But of all men, deserving to be 
called ‘ great,’ Fra Angelico permits to himself the least par- 
donable faults, and the most palpable follies. There is evi- 
dently within him a sense of grace, and power of invention, 

‘as great as Ghiberti’s :—we are in the habit of attributing 
those high qualities to his religious enthusiasm ; but, if they 
were produced by that enthusiasm in him, they ought to be 
produced by the same feelings in others; and we see they 


96 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


are not. Whereas, comparing him with contemporary great 
artists, of equal grace and invention, one peculiar character 
remains notable in him—which, logically, we ought therefore 
to attribute to the religious fervour ;—and that distinctive 
character is, the contented indulgence of his own weaknesses, 
and perseverance in his own ignorances. 

Mary. But that’s dreadful! And what is the source of the 
peculiar charm which we all feel in his work? 

L. There are many sources of it, Mary; united and seem- 
ing like one. You would never feel that charm but in the 
work of an entirely good man; be sure of that; but the 
goodness is only the recipient and modifying element, not the 
creative one. Consider carefully what delights you in any 
original picture of Angelico’s. You will find, for one minor 
thing, an exquisite variety and brightness of ornamental 
work. That is not Angelico’s inspiration. It is the final 
result of the labour and thought of millions of artists, of all 
nations; from the earliest Egyptian potters downwards—- 
Greeks, Byzantines, Hindoos, Arabs, Gauls, and Northmen— 
all joining in the toil; and consummating it in Florence, in 
that century, with such embroidery of robe and inlaying of 
armour as had never been seen till then ; nor, probably, ever 
will be seen more. Angelico merely takes his share of this 
inheritance, and applies it in the tenderest way to subjects 
which are peculiarly acceptant of it. But the inspiration, if 
it exist anywhere, flashes on the knight’s shield quite as ra- 
diantly as on the monk’s picture. Examining farther into 
ihe sources of your emotion in the Angelico work, you will 
find much of the impression of sanctity dependent on a sin- 
cular repose and grace of gesture, consummating itself in the 
floating, flying, and above all, in the dancing groups. That 
is not Angelico’s inspiration. It is only a peculiarly tender 
use of systems of grouping which had been long before de- 
veloped by Giotto, Memmi, and Orcagna ; and the real root 
of it all is simply—What do you think, children? The beau- 
tiful dancing of the Florentine maidens ! 

Dora (indignant again). Now, I wonder what next! Why 
not say it all depended on Herodias’ daughter, at once ? 


HOME VIRTUES. 97 


L. Yes; it is certainly a great argument against singing, 
that there were once sirens. 

Dora. Well, it may be all very fine and philosophical, but 
shouldn’t I just like to read you the end of the second volume 
of ‘ Modern Painters’ ! 

LL. My dear, do you think any teacher could be worth your 
listening to, or anybody else’s listening to, who had learned 
nothing, and altered his mind in nothing, from seven and 
twenty to seven and forty? But that second volume is very 
good for you as far as it goes. It isa great advance, and a 
thoroughly straight and swift one, to be led, as itis the main 
business of that second volume to lead you, from Dutch cattle 
pieces, and ruffian-pieces, to Fra Angelico. And it is right 
for you also, as you grow older, to be strengthened in the 
general sense and judgment which may enable you to distin- 
guish the weaknesses from the virtues of what you love: else 
you might come to love both alike ; or even the weaknesses 
without the virtues. You might end by liking Overbeck and 
Cornelius as well as Angelico. However, I have perhaps been 
leaning a little too much to the merely practical side of 
things, in to-night’s talk; and you are always to remember, 
children, that I do not deny, though I cannot affirm, the 
spiritual advantages resulting, in certain cases, from enthusi- 
astic religous reverie, and from the other practices of saints 
and anchorites. The evidence respecting them has never yet 
been honestly collected, much less dispassionately examined : 
but assuredly, there is in that direction a probability, and 
more than a probability, of dangerous error, while there is 
none whatever in the practice of an active, cheerful, and 
benevolent life. The hope of attaining a higher religious 
position, which induces us to encounter, for its exalted alterna- 
tive, the risk of unhealthy error, is often, as I said, founded 
more on pride than piety ; and those who, in modest useful- 
ness, have accepted what seemed to them here the lowliest 
place in the kingdom of their Father, are not, I believe, the 
least likely to receive hereafter the command, then unnistaka- 
ble, ‘Friend, go up higher.’ 


LECTURE VIII. 


CRYSTAL CAPRICE. 


Formal Lecture in Schoolroom, after some practical examination of 
minerals, 


L. We have seen enough, children, though very little of 
what might be seen if we had more time, of mineral struct- 
ures produced by visible opposition, or contest amung ele- 
ments ; structures of which the variety, however great, need 
not surprise us: for we quarrel, ourselves, for many and 
slight causes ;—much more, one should think, may crystals, 
who can only feel the antagonism, not argue about it. But 
there is a yet more singular mimicry of our human ways in the 
varieties of form which appear owing to no antagonistic force ; 
but merely to the variable humour and caprice of the crystals 
themselves: and I have asked you all to come into the school- 
room to-day, because, of course, this is a part of the crystal 
mind which must be peculiarly interesting to a feminine 
audience. (Great symptoms of disapproval on the part of said 
audience.) Now, you need not pretend that it will not in- 
terest you; why should it not? It is true that we men are 
never capricious; but that only makes us the more dull 
and disagreeable. You, who are crystalline in brightness, as 
well as in caprice, charm infinitely, by infinitude of change. 
(Audible murmurs of ‘ Worse and worse!’ ‘ As if we could be 
got over that way!’ &e. The Lecturer, however, observing the 
expression of the features to be more complacent, proceeds.) 
And the most curious mimicry, if not of your changes of 
fashion, at least of your various modes (in healthy periods) of 
national costume, takes place among the crystals of different 
countries. With a little experience, it is quite possible to 
say at a glance, in what districts certain crystals have been 


CRYSTAL CAPRICE. 99 


‘found; and although, if we had knowledge extended and 
accurate enough, we might of course ascertain the laws and 
circumstances which have necessarily produced the form pe- 
culiar to each locality, this would be just as true of the 
fancies of the human mind. If we could know the exact cir- 
cumstances which affect it, we could foretell what now seems 
to us only caprice of thought, as well as what now seems to 
us only caprice of crystal: nay, so far as our knowledge 
reaches, it is on the whole easier to find some reason why the 
peasant girls of Berne should wear their caps in the shape of 
butterflies; and the peasant girls of Munich their’s in the 
shape of shells, than to say why the rock-crystals of Dauphiné 
should all have their summits of the shape of lp-pieces of 
flageolets, while those of St. Gothard are symmetrical; or 
why the fluor of Chamouni is rose-coloured, and in octahe- 
drons, while the fluor of Weardale is green, and in cubes. 
‘Still farther removed is the hope, at present, of accounting 
for minor differences in modes of grouping and construction. 
Take, for instance, the caprices of this single mineral, quartz ; 
-—variations upon a single theme. It has many forms; but 
see what it will make out of this one, the six-sided prism. 
For shortness’ sake, I shall call the body of the prism its 
‘column,’ and the pyramid at the extremities its ‘cap,’ Now, 
here, first you have a straight column, as long and thin as a 
stalk of asparagus, with two little caps at the ends ; and here 
you have a short thick column, as solid as a haystack, with 
two fat caps at the ends ; and here you have two caps fastened 
together, and no column at all between them! Then here is 
a crystal with its column fat in the middle, and tapering to a 
little cap ; and here is one stalked like a mushroom, with a 
huge cap put on the top of a slender column! Then here is 
a column built wholly out of little caps, with a large smooth 
cap at the top. And here isa column built of columns and 
caps ; the caps all truncated about half way to their points. 
And in both these last, the little crystals are set anyhow, and 
build the large one in a disorderly way ; but here is a crystal 
made of columns and truncated caps, set in regular terraces 
all the way up. 


100 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


Mary. But are not these, groups of crystals, rather than 
one crystal ? 

L. What do you mean by a group, and what by one 
crystal ? 

Dora (audibly aside, to Mary, who is brought to pause). You 
know you are never expected to answer, Mary. 

L. I'm sure this is easy enough. What do you mean by a 
group of people? 

Mary. Three or four together, or a good many together, 
like the caps in these crystals. 

L. But when a great many persons get together they don’t 
take the shape of one person ? 


(Mary still at pause.) 


Isapet. No, because they can’t ; but, you know the erystals 
can ; so why shouldn’t they ? 

L. Well, they don’t ; that is to say, they don’t always, nor 
even often. Look here, Isabel. 

Isapet. What a nasty ugly thing ! 

L. I'm glad you think it so ugly. Yet it is made of beau- 
tiful crystals ; they are a little grey and cold in colour, but 
most of them are clear. 

Isanet. But they're in such horrid, horrid disorder ! 

L. Yes; all disorder is horrid, when it is among things 
that are naturally orderly. Some little girl’s rooms are natu- 
rally disorderly, I suppose; or I don’t know how they could 
live in them, if they cry out so when they only see quartz 
crystals in confusion. 

TsaseL. Oh! but how come they to be like that? 

L. You may well ask. And yet you will always hear peo- 
ple talking as if they thought order more wonderful than dis- 
order! It is wonderful—as we have seen; but to me, as to 
you, child, the supremely wonderful thing is that nature 
should ever be ruinous or wasteful, or deathful! I look at 
this wild piece of crystallisation with endless astonishment. 

Many. Where does it come from? 

L. The Téte Noire of Chamonix. What makes it more 
strange is that it should be in a vein of fine quartz rock. If it 


CRYSTAL CAPRICE. 101 


were in a mouldering rock, it would be natural enough ; but 
in the midst of so fine substance, here are the crystals tossed 
in a heap; some large, myriads small (almost as Small as 
dust), tumbling over each other like a terrified crowd, and 
glued together by the sides, and edges, and backs, and heads ; 
some warped, and some pushed out and in, and all spoiled, 
and each spoiling the rest. 

Mary. And how flat they all are ! 

L. Yes; that’s the fashion at the Téte Noire. 

Mary. But surely this is ruin, not caprice ? 

L. I believe it is in great part misfortune ; and we will ex- 
amine these crystal troubles in next lecture. But if you want 
to see the gracefullest and happiest caprices of which dust is 
capable, you must go to the Hartz; not that I ever mean to 
go there myself, for I want to retain the romantic fecling 
about the name ; and I have done myself some harm already 
by seeing the monotonous and heavy form of the Brocken 
from the suburbs of Brunswick. But whether the mountains 
be picturesque or not, the tricks which the goblins (as I am 
told) teach the crystals in them, are incomparably pretty. 
They work chiefly on the mind of a docile, bluish-coloured, 
carbonate of lime; which comes out of a grey limestone. 
The goblins take the greatest possible care of its education, 
and see that nothing happens to it to hurt its temper; and 
when it may be supposed to have arrived at the crisis which 
is, to a well brought up mineral, what presentation at court is 
to a young lady—after which it is expected to set fashions— 
there’s no end to its pretty ways of behaving. First it will 
make itself into pointed darts as fine as hoar-frost ; here, it 
is changed into a white fur as fine as silk; here into little 
crowns and circlets, as bright as silver ; as if for the gnome 
princesses to wear; here it is in beautiful little plates, for 
them to eat off; presently it is in towers which they might be 
imprisoned in; presently in caves and cells, where they may 
inake nun-gnomes of themselves, and no gnome ever hear of 
them more; here is seme of it in sheaves, like corn; here, some 
in drifts, like snow; here, some in rays, like stars: and, though 
these are, all of them, necessarily, shapes that the mineral 


102 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


takes in other places, they are all taken here with such a grace 
that you recognise the high caste and breeding of the crystals 
wherever you meet them ; and know at once they are Hartz- 
born. 

Of course, such fine things as these are only done by crys- 
tals which are perfectly good, and good-humoured ; and of 
course, also, there are ill-humoured crystals who torment each 
other, and annoy quieter crystals, yet without coming to any- 
thing like serious war. Here (for once) is some ill-disposed 
quartz, tormenting a peaceable octahedron of fluor, in mere 
caprice. I looked at it the other night so long, and so won- 
deringly, just before putting my candle out, that I fell into 
another strange dream. But you don’t care about dreams. 

Dora. No; we didn’t, yesterday; but you know we are 
made up of caprice ; so we do, to-day: and you must tell it 
us directly. 

L. Well, you see, Neith and her work were still much in 
my mind; and then, I had been looking over these Hartz 
things for you, and thinking of the sort of grotesque sympa- 
thy there seemed to be in them with the beautiful fringe and 
pinnacle work of Northern architecture. So, when I fell 
asleep, I thought I saw Neith and St. Barbara talking 
together. 

Dora. But what had St. Barbara to do with it? * 

L. My dear, Iam quite sure St. Barbara is the patroness 
of good architects: not St. Thomas, whatever the old build- 
ers thought. It might be very fine, according to the monks’ 
notions, in St. Thomas, to give all his employer’s money away 
to the poor: but breaches of contract are bad foundations ; 
and I believe, it was not he, but St. Barbara, who overlooked 
the work in all the buildings you and I care about. However 
that may be, it was certainly she whom I saw in my dream 
with Neith. Neith was sitting weaving, and I thought she 
looked sad, and threw her shuttle slowly ; and St. Barbara was 
standing at her side, in astiff little gown, all ins and outs, and 
angles ; but so bright with embroidery that it dazzled me when- 
ever she moved ; the train of it was just like a heap of broken 


* Note v. 


CRYSTAL CAPRICE. 103 


jewels, it was so stiff, and full of corners, and so many-coloured, 
and bright. Her hair fell over her shoulders in long, delicate 
waves, from under a little three pinnacled crown, like a tower. 
She was asking Neith about the laws of architecture in Egypt 
and Greece; and when Neith told her the measures of the 
pyramids, St. Barbara said she thought they would have been 
better three-cornered: and when Neith told her the measures 
of the Parthenon, St. Barbara said she thought it ought to 
have had two transepts. But she was pleased when Neith 
told her of the temple of the dew, and of the Caryan maidens 
bearing its frieze: and then she thought that perhaps Neith 
would like to hear what sort of temples she was building her- 
self, in the French valleys, and on the crags of the Rhine. 
So she began gossiping, just as one of you might to an old 
lady : and certainly she talked in the sweetest way in the world 
to Neith; and explained to her all about crockets and pin- 
nacles: and Neith sat, looking very grave ; and always graver 
as St. Barbara went on; till at last, 'm sorry to say, St. Bar- 
bara lost her temper a little. 

May (very grave herself). ‘St. Barbara ?’ 

L. Yes, May. Why shouldn’t she? It was very tiresome 
of Neith to sit looking like that. 

May. But, then, St. Barbara was a saint ! 

L. What’s that, May? 

May. A saint! A saint is—I am sure you know! 

L. If I did, it would not make me sure that you knew too, 
May: but I don’t. 

Viouer (expressing the incredulity of the audience). Oh,—sir ! 

L. That is to say, I know that people are called saints who 
are supposed to be better than others: but I don’t know how 
much better they must be, in order to be saints; nor how 
nearly anybody may be a saint, and yet not be quite one ; nor 
whether everybody who is called a saint was one; nor whether 
everybody who isn’t called a saint, isn’t one. 


(General silence ; the audience feeling themselves on the 
verge of the Infinities—and a little shocked—and much 
puzzled by so many questions at once.) 


104 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


L. Besides, did you never hear that verse about being ‘called 
to be saints’? 


May (repeats Rom. i. 7.) 


L. Quite right, May. Well, then, who are called to be that? 
People in Rome only ? 

May. Everybody, I suppose, whom God loves. 

L. What! little girls as well as other people ? 

May. All grown-up people, I mean. 

L. Why not little girls? Are they wickeder when they are 
little ? 

May. Oh, I hope not. 

L. Why not little girls, then ? 


(Pause.) 


Liry. Because, you know, we can’t be worth anything if 
we're ever so good ;—I mean, if we try to be ever so good; 
aud we can’t do difficult things—like saints. 

L. I am afraid, my dear, that old people are not more able 
or willing for their difficulties than you children are for yours, 
All I can say is, that if ever I see any of you, when you are 
seven or eight and twenty, knitting your brows over any work 
you want to do or to understand, as I saw you, Lily, knitting 
your brows over your slate this morning, I should think you 
very noble women. But—to come back to my dream—St. 
Barbara did lose her temper a little ; and I was not surprised. 
For you can’t think how provoking Neith looked, sitting there 
just like a statue of sandstone ; only going on weaving, like a 
machine ; and never quickening the cast of her shuttle ; while 
St. Barbara was telling her so eagerly all about the most beau- 
tiful things, and chattering away, as fast as bells ring on Christ- 
mas Eve, till she saw that Neith didn’t care; and then St. 
Barbara got as red as a rose, and stopped, just in time ;—or 
I think she would really have said something naughty. 

Isaset. Oh, please, but didn’t Neith say anything then? 

L. Yes. She said, quite quietly, ‘It may be very pretty, 
my love ; but it is all nonsense.’ 

Isanen. Oh dear, oh dear ; and then ? 

L. Well; then I was a little angry myself, and hoped St 


CRYSTAL CAPRICE. 105 


Barbara would be quite angry ; but she wasn’t. She bit her 
lips first; and then gave a great sigh—such a wild, sweet 
sigh—and then she knelt down and hid her face on Neith’s 
knees. Then Neith smiled a little, and was moved. 

Isanet. Oh, I am so glad! 

L. And she touched St. Barbara’s forehead with a flower 
of white lotus; and St. Barbara sobbed once or twice, and 
then said: ‘If you only could see how beautiful it is, and how 
much it makes people feel what is good and lovely; and 
if you could only hear the children singing in the Lady chap- 
els!’ And Neith smiled,—but still sadly,—and said, ‘How 
do you know what I have seen, or heard, my love? Do you 
think all those vaults and towers of yours have been built 
without me? There was not a pillar in your Giotto’s Santa 
Maria del Fiore which I did not set true by my spearshaft as 
it rose. But this pinnacle and flame work which has set your 
little heart on fire, is all vanity ; and you will see what it will 
come to, and that soon; and none will grieve for it more 
than I. And then every one will disbelieve your pretty 
symbols and types. Men must be spoken simply to, my 
dear, if you would guide them kindly, and long.’ But St. 
Barbara answered, that, ‘Indeed she thought every one liked 
her work,’ and that ‘the people of different towns were as 
eager about their cathedral towers as about their privileges 
or their markets;’ and then she asked Neith to come and 
build something with her, wall against tower; and ‘see 
whether the people will be as much pleased with your build- 
ing as with mine.’ But Neith answered, ‘I will not contend 
with you, my dear. I strive not with those who love me; 
and for those who hate me, it is not well to strive with me, 
as weaver Arachne knows. And remember, child, that noth- 
ing is ever done beautifully, which is done in rivalship ; nor 
nobly, which is done in pride.’ 

Then St. Barbara hung her head quite down, and said she 
was very sorry she had been so foolish; and kissed Neith ; 
and stood thinking a minute: and then her eyes got bright 
again, and she said, she would go directly and build a chapel 
with five windows in it; four for the four cardinal virtues, 


106 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


and one for humility, in the middle, bigger than the rest 
And Neith very nearly laughed quite out, I thought ; cer- 
tainly her beautiful lips lost all their sternness for an instant ; 
then she said, ‘ Well, love, build it, but do not put so many 
colours into your windows as you usually do; else no one 
will be able to see to read, inside:‘and when it is built, let 
a poor village priest consecrate it, and not an archbishop.’ 
St. Barbara started a little, I thought, and turned as if to say 
something ; but changed her mind, and gathered up her 
train, and went out. And Neith bent herself again to her 
loom, in which she was weaving a web of strange dark col- 
ours, I thought ; but perhaps it was only after the glittering 
of St. Barbara’s embroidered train: and I tried to make out 
the figures in Neith’s web, and confused myself among them, 
as one always does in dreams; and then the dream changed 
altogether, and I found myself, all at once, among a crowd of 
little Gothic and Egyptian spirits, who were quarrelling: at 
least the Gothic ones were trying to quarrel; for the Egyp- 
tian ones only sat with their hands on their knees, and their 
aprons sticking out very stiffly; and stared. And after a 
while I began to understand what the matter was. It seemed 
that some of the troublesome building imps, who meddle and 
make continually, even in the best Gothic work, had been 
listening to St. Barbara’s talk with Neith ; and had made up 
their minds that Neith had no workpeople who could build 
against them. ‘They were but dull imps, as -you may fancy 
by their thinking that ; and never had done much, except 
disturbing the great Gothic building angels at their work, 
and playing tricks to each other; indeed, of late they had 
been living years and years, like bats, up under the cornices 
of Strasbourg and Cologne cathedrals, with nothing to do 
but to make mouths at the people below. However, they 
thought they knew everything about tower building ; and 
those who had heard what Neith said, told the rest; and 
they all flew down directly, chattering in German, like jack- 
daws, to show Neith’s people what they could do. And they 
had found some of Neith’s old workpeople somewhere near 
Sais, sitting in the sun, with their hands on their knees; and 


CRYSTAL CAPRICE. 107 


abused them heartily : and Neith’s people did not mind at 
first, but, after a while, they seemed to get tired of the noise ; 
and one or two rose up slowly, and laid hold of their measur- 
ing rods, and said, ‘If St. Barbara’s people liked to build 
with them, tower against pyramid, they would show them 
how to lay stones.’ Then the little Gothic spirits threw a 
great many double somersaults for joy; and put the tips of 
their tongues out slily to each other, on one side ; andI heard 
the Egyptians say, ‘they must be some new kind of frog— 
they didn’t think there was much building in them.’ How- 
ever, the stiff old workers took their rods, as I said, and 
measured out a square space of sand; but as soon as the 
German spirits saw that, they declared they wanted exactly 
that bit of ground to build on, themselves. Then the Egyp- 
tian builders offered to go farther off, and the Germans ones 
said, ‘Ja wohl.’ But as soon as the Egyptians had measured 
out another square, the little Germans said they must have 
some of that too. Then Neith’s people laughed ; and said, 
‘they might take as much as they liked, but they would not 
move the plan of their pyramid again.” Then the little Ger- 
mans took three pieces, and began to build three spires 
directly ; one large, and two little. And when the Egyptians 
saw they had fairly begun, they laid their foundation all 
round, of large square stones: and began to build, so steadily 
that they had like to have swallowed up the three little Ger- 
man spires. So when the Gothic spirits saw that, they built 
their spires leaning, like the tower of Pisa, that they might 
stick out at the side of the pyramid. And Neith’s people 
stared at them ; and thought it very clever, but very wrong ; 
and on they went, in their own way, and said nothing. Then 
the little Gothic spirits were terribly provoked because they 
could not spoil the shape of the pyramid ; and they sat down 
all along the ledges of it to make faces ; but that did no good. 
Then they ran to the corners, and put their elbows on their 
knees, and stuck themselves out as far as they could, and 
made more faces ; but that did no good, neither. Then they 
looked up to the sky, and opened their mouths wide, and 
gobbled, and said it was too hot for work, and wondered 


108 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


when it would rain ; but that did no good, neither. And all 
the while the Egyptian spirits were laying step above step, 
patiently. But when the Gothic ones looked, and saw how 
high they had got, they said, ‘Ach, Himmel!’ and flew down 
in a great black cluster to the bottom ; and swept out a level 
spot in the sand with their wings, in no time, and began 
building a tower straight up, as fast as they could. And 
the Egyptians stood still again to stare at them; for the 
Gothic spirits had got quite into a passion, and were really 
working very wonderfully. They cut the sandstone into 
strips as fine as reeds; and put one reed on the top of another, 
so that you could not see where they fitted: and they twisted 
them in and out like basket work, and knotted them into 
likenesses of ugly faces, and of strange beasts biting each 
other ; and up they went, and up still, and they made spiral 
staircases at the corners, for the loaded workers to come up by 
(for I saw they were but weak imps, and could not fly with 
stones on their backs), and then they made traceried galleries 
for them to run round by; and so up again ; with finer and finer 
work, till the Egyptians wondered whether they meant the 
thing for a tower or a pillar: and I heard them saying to one 
another, ‘It was nearly as pretty as lotus stalks; and if it 
were not for the ugly faces, there would be a fine temple, if 
they were going to build it all with pillars as big as that!’ 
But in a minute afterwards,—just as the Gothic spirits had 
carried their work as high as the upper course, but three or 
four, of the pyramid—the Egyptians called out to them to 
‘mind what they were about, for the sand was running away 
from under one of their tower corners.’ But it was too late 
to mind what they were about; for, in another instant, the 
whole tower sloped aside; and the Gothic imps rose out of 
it like a flight of puffins, in a single cloud; but screaming 
worse than any puffins you ever heard: and down came the 
tower, all in a piece, like a falling poplar, with its head right 
on the flank of the pyramid ; against which it snapped short 
off. And of course that waked me! 

Mary. What a shame of you to have such a dream, after all! 
you have told us about Gothic architecture ! 


CRYSTAL CAPRICE. 109 


L. If you have understood anything I ever told you about 
it, you know that no architecture was ever corrupted more 
miserably ; or abolished more justly by the accomplishment 
of its own follies. Besides, even in its days of power, it was 
subject to catastrophes of this kind. I have stood too often, 
mourning, by the grand fragment of the apse of Beauvais, not 
to have that fact well burnt into me. Still, you must have 
seen, surely, that these imps were of the Flamboyant school ; 
or, at least, of the German schools correspondent with it in 
extravagance. 

Mary. But, then, where is the crystal about which you 
dreamed all this ? 

L. Here; but I suppose little Pthah has touched it again, 
for it is very small. But, you see, here is the pyramid, built 
of great square stones of fluor spar, straight up ; and here are 
the three little pinnacles of mischievous quartz, which have 
set themselves, at the same time, on the same foundation ; 
only they lean like the tower of Pisa, and come out obliquely 
at the side: and here is one great spire of quartz which seems 
as if it had been meant to stand straight up, a little way off ; 
and then had fallen down against the pyramid base, breaking 
its pinnacle away. In reality, it has crystallised horizontally, 
and terminated imperfectly : but, then, by what caprice does 
one crystal form horizontally, when all the rest stand upright ? 
But this is nothing to the phantasies of fluor, and quartz, and 
some other such companions, when they get leave to-do any- 
thing they hke. I could show you fifty specimens, about 
every one of which you might fancy a new fairy tale. Not 
that, in truth, any crystals get leave to do quite what they 
like ; and many of them are sadly tried, and have little time 
for caprices—poor things ! 

Mary. I thought they always looked as if they were either 
in play or in mischief! What trials have they ? 

L. Trials much like our own. Sickness, and starvation ; 
fevers, and agues, and palsy ; oppression; and old age, and 
the necessity of passing away in their time, like all else. If 
there’s any pity in you, you must come to-morrow, and take 
some part in these crystal griefs. 


110 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


~ Dora. I am sure we shall cry till our eyes are red. 

L. Ah, you may laugh, Dora: but I've been made grave, 
not once, nor twice, to see that even crystals ‘cannot choose 
but be old’ at last. It may be but a shallow proverb of the 
Justice’s ; but it is a shrewdly wide one. 

Dora (pensive, for once). I suppose it is very dreadful to 
be old! But then (brightening again), what should we do 
without our dear old friends, and our nice old lecturers ? 

L. If all nice old lecturers were minded as little as one I 
know of —— 

Dora. And if they all meant as little what they say, would 
they not deserve it? But we'll come—we'll come, and cry. 


LECTURE IX. 


CRYSTAL SORROWS. 
Working Lecture in Schoolroom. 


L. We have been hitherto talking, children, as if crystals 
might live, and play, and quarrel, and behave ill or well, 
according to their characters, without interruption from any- 
thing else. But so far from this being so, nearly all crystals, 
whatever their characters, have to live a hard life of it, and 
meet with many misfortunes. If we could see far enough, 
we should find, indeed, that, at the root, all their vices were 
misfortunes: but to-day I want you to see what sort of 
troubles the best crystals have to go through, occasionally, 
by no fault of their own. 

This black thing, which is one of the prettiest of the very 
few pretty black things in the world, is called ‘'Tourmaline.’ 
It may be transparent, and green, or red, as well as black ; 
and then no stone can be prettier (only, all the light that 
gets into it, I believe, comes out a good deal the worse ; and 
is not itself again for a long while). But this is the com- 
monest state of it,—opaque, and as black as jet. 

Mary. What does ‘Tourmaline’ mean? 

L. They say it is Ceylanese, and I don’t know Ceylanese ; 
but we may always be thankful for a graceful word, whatever 
it means. 

Mary. And what is it made of? 

L. A little of everything ; there’s always flint, and clay, and 
magnesia in it; and the black is iron, according to its fancy ; 
and there’s boracic acid, if you know what that is; and if 
you don’t, I cannot tell you to-day; and it doesn’t signify: 
and there's potash, and soda; and, on the whole, the chem- 
istry of it is more like a medizval doctor’s prescription, than 


112 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. — 


the making of a respectable mineral: but it may, perhaps, be 
owing to the strange complexity of its make, that it has a 
notable habit which makes it, to me, one of the most inter- 
esting of minerals. You see these two crystals are broken 
right across, in many places, just as if they had been shafts 
of black marble fallen from a ruinous temple ; and here they 
lie, imbedded in white quartz, fragment succeeding fragment, 
keeping the line of the original crystal, while the quartz fills 
up the intervening spaces. Now tourmaline has a trick of 
doing this, more than any other mineral I know: here is 
another bit which I picked up on the glacier of Macugnaga ; 
it is broken, like a pillar built of very flat broad stones, into 
about thirty joints, and all these are heaved and warped away 
from each other sideways, almost into a line of steps; and 
then all is filled up with quartz paste. And here, lastly, is a 
green Indian piece, in which the pillar is first disjointed, and 
_then wrung round into the shape of an §, 

Mary. How can this have been done? 

L. There are a thousand ways in which it may have been 
done ; the difficulty is not to account for the doing of it ; but 
for the showing of it in some crystals, and not in others. You 
never by any chance get a quartz crystal broken or twisted in 
this way. If it break or twist at all, which it does sometimes, 
like the spire of Dijon, it is by its own will or fault; it never 
seems to have been passively crushed. But, for the forces 
which cause this passive ruin of the tourmaline,—here is a 
stone which will show you multitudes of them in operation 
at once. It is known as ‘brecciated agate,’ beautiful, as you 
see ; and highly valued as a pebble: yet, so far as I can read 
or hear, no one has ever looked at it with the least attention. 
At the first glance, you see it is made of very fine red striped 
agates, which have been broken into small pieces, and fast- 
ened together again by paste, also of agate. There would be 
nothing wonderful in this, if this were all. It is well known 
that by the movements of strata, portions of rock are often 
shattered to pieces :—well known also that agate is a deposit 
of flint by water under certain conditions of heat and press- 
ure: there is, therefore, nothing wonderful in an agate’s 


CRYSTAL SORROWS. 113 


being broken ; and nothing wonderful in its being mended 
with the solution out of which it was itself originally con- 
gealed. And with this explanation, most people, looking at 
a brecciated agate, or brecciated anything, seem to be satis- 
fied. Iwasso myself, for twenty years; but, lately happening 
to stay for some time at the Swiss Baden, where the beach of 
the Limmat is almost wholly composed of brecciated lime- 
stones, I began to examine them thoughtfully ; and perceived, 
in the end, that they were, one and all, knots of as rich mystery 
as any poor little human brain was ever lost in. That piece of 
agate in your hand, Mary, will show you many of the common 
phenomena of breccias; but you need not knit your brows 
over it in that way ; depend upon it, neither you nor I shall 
ever know anything about the way it was made, as long as we 
live. 

Dora. That does not seem much to depend upon. 

L. Pardon me, puss. When once we gain some real notion 
of the extent and the unconquerableness of our ignorance, 
it is a very broad and restful thing to depend upon: you 
can throw yourself upon it at ease, as on a cloud, to feast 
with the gods. You do not thenceforward trouble yourself, 
—nor any one else,—with theories, or the contradiction of 
theories; you neither get headache nor heartburning ; and 
you never more waste your poor little store of strength, or 
allowance of time. 

However, there are certain facts, about this agate-making, 
which I can tell you; and then you may look at it ina 
pleasant wonder as long as you like; pleasant wonder is no 
loss of time. 

First, then, it is not broken freely by a blow ; it is slowly 
wrung, or ground, to pieces. You can only with extreme 
dimness conceive the force exerted on mountains in transi- 
tional states of movement. You have all read a little geol- 
ogy; and you know how coolly geologists talk of mountains 
being raised or depressed. They talk coolly of it, because 
they are accustomed to the fact ; but the very universality of 
the fact prevents us from ever conceiving distinctly the con- 
ditions of force involved. You know I was living last year 


114 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


in Savoy ; my house was on the back of a sloping mountain, 
which rose gradually for two miles, behind it ; and then fell 
at once in a great precipice towards Geneva, going down three 
thousand feet in four or five cliffs, or steps. Now that whole 
group of cliffs had simply been torn away by sheer strength 
from the rocks below, as if the whole mass had been as soft 
as biscuit. Put four or five captains’ biscuits on the floor, on 
the top of one another ; and try to break them all in half, not 
by bending, but by holding one half down, and tearing the 
other halves straight up ;—of course you will not be able to do 
it, but you will feel and comprehend the sort of force needed. 
Then, fancy each captains’ biscuit a bed of rock, six or 
seven hundred feet thick; and the whole mass torn straight 
through; and one half heaved up three thousand feet, grind- 
ing against the other as it rose,—and you will have some idea 
of the making of the Mont Saléve. 

May. But it must crush the rocks all to dust ! 

L. No; for there is no room for dust. The pressure is too 
great ; probably the heat developed also so great that the 
rock is made partly ductile ; but the worst of it is, that we 
never can see these parts of mountains in the state they were 
left in at the time of their elevation; for it is precisely in 
these rents and dislocations that the crystalline power prin- 
cipally exerts itself. It is essentially a styptic power, and 
wherever the earth is torn, it heals and binds; nay, the tort- 
ure and grieving of the earth seem necessary to bring out 
its full energy ; for you only find the crystalline living power 
fully in action, where the rents and faults are deep and many. 

Dora. If you please, sir,—would you tell us—what are 
‘faults’ ? 

L. You never heard of such things? 

Dora. Never in all our lives. 

L. When a vein of rock which is going on smoothly, is in- 
terrupted by another troublesome little vein, which stops it, 
and puts it out, so that it has to begin again in another place 
—that is called a fault. J always think it ought to be called 
the fault of the vein that interrupts it ; but the miners always 
call it the fault of the vein that is interrupted. 


CRYSTAL SORROWS. 115 


Dora. So it is, if it does not begin again where it left off. 

L. Well, that is certainly the gist of the business: but, 
whatever good-natured old lecturers may do, the rocks have a 
bad habit, when they are once interrupted, of never asking 
‘Where was I?’ 

Dora. When the two halves of the dining table came sepa- 
rate, yesterday, was that a ‘fault’? 

L. Yes; but not the table’s. However, it is not a bad illus- 
tration, Dora. When beds of rock are only interrupted by a 
fissure, but remain at the same level, like the two halves of the 
table, it is not called a fault, but only a fissure ; but if one half 
of the table be either tilted higher than the other, or pushed 
to the side, so that the two parts will not fit, it isa fault. 
You had better read the chapter on faults in Jukes’s Geology ; 
then you will know all about it. And this rent that I am tell- 
ing you of in the Saléve, is one only of myriads, to which are 
owing the forms of the Alps, as, I believe, of all great moun- 
tain chains. Wherever you see a precipice on any scale of 
real magnificence, you will nearly always find it owing to some 
dislocation of this kind ; but the point of chief wonder to me, 
is the delicacy of the touch by which these gigantic rents have 
been apparently accomplished. Note, however, that we have 
no clear evidence, hitherto, of the time taken to produce any 
of them. We know that a change of temperature alters the po- 
sition and the angles of the atoms of crystals, and also the 
entire bulk of rocks. We know that in all voleanic, and the 
ereater part of all subterranean, action, temperatures are con- 
tinually changing, and therefore masses of rock must be ex- 
panding or contracting, with infinite slowness, but with in- 
finite force. This pressure must result in mechanical strain 
somewhere, both in their own substance, and in that of the 
rocks surrounding them ; and we can form no conception of 
the result of irresistible pressure, applied so as to rend and 
raise, with imperceptible slowness of gradation, masses 
thousands of feet in thickness. We want some experiments 
tried on masses of iron and stone; and we can’t get them 
tried, because Christian creatures never will seriously and 
sufficiently spend money, except to find out the shortest ways 


116 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


of killing each other. But, besides this slow kind of press- 
ure, there is evidence of more or less sudden violence, on the 
same terrific scale ; and, through it all, the wonder, as I said, 
is always to me the delicacy of touch. I cut a block of the 
Saléve limestone from the edge of one of the principal faults 
which have formed the precipice ; it is a lovely compact lime- 
stone, and the fault itself is filled up with a red breccia, 
formed of the crushed fragments of the torn rock, cemented 
by arich red crystalline paste. I have had the piece I cut 
from it smoothed, and polished across the junction ; here it 
is; and you may now pass your soft little fingers over the 
surface, without so much as feeling the place where a rock 
which all the hills of England might have been sunk in the 
body of, and not a summit seen, was torn asunder through 
that whole thickness, as a thin dress is torn when you tread 
upon it. 

(The audience examine the stone, and touch it timidly ; but 

the matter remains inconceivable to them.) 


Mary (struck by the beauty of the stone). But this is almost 
marble ? 

L. It is quite marble. And another singular point in the 
business, to my mind, is that these stones, which men have 
been cutting into slabs, for thousands of years, to ornament 
their principal buildings with,—and which, under the general 
name of ‘marble,’ have been the delight of the eyes, and the 
wealth of architecture, among all civilised nations,—are pre- 
cisely those on which the signs and brands of these earth- 
agonies have been chiefly struck; and there is not a purple 
vein nor flaming zone in them, which is not the record of 
their ancient torture. What a boundless capacity for sleep, 
and for serene stupidity, there is in the human mind! Fancy 
reflective beings, who cut and polish stones for three thousand 
years, for the sake of the pretty stains upon them; and edu- 
cate themselves to an art at last (such as it is), of imitating 
these veins by dexterous painting ; and never a curious soul 
of them, all that while, asks, ‘ What painted the rocks?’ 


(The audience look dejected, and ashamed of themselves.) 


CRYSTAL SORROWS. 117 


The fact is, we are all, and always, asleep, through our 
lives ; and it is only by pinching ourselves very hard that we 
ever come to see, or understand, anything. At least, it is not 
always we who pinch ourselves; sometimes other people 
pinch us; which I suppose is very good of them,—or other 
things, which I suppose is very proper of them. But it is a 
sad life; made up chiefly of naps and pinches. 


Some of the audience, on this, appearing to think that the 
iP} g 
others require pinching, the Licrurrr changes the subject.) 


Now, however, for once, look at a piece of marble care- 
fully, and think about it. You see this is one side of the 
fault; the other side is down or up, nobody knows where ; 
but, on this side, you can trace the evidence of the dragging 
and tearing action. All along the edge of this marble, the 
ends of the fibres of the rock are torn, here an inch, and there 
half an inch, away from each other; and you see the exact 
places where they fitted, before they were torn separate ; and 
you see the rents are now all filled up with the sanguine paste, 
full of the broken pieces of the rock; the paste itself seems 
to have been half melted, and partly to have also melted the 
edge of the fragments it contains, and then to have crystal- 
lised with them, and round them. And the brecciated agate 
I first showed you contains exactly the same phenomena ; 
a zoned crystallisation. goiny on amidst the cemented frag- 
ments, partly altering the structure of those fragments them- 
selves, and subject to continual change, either in the intensity 
of its own power, or in the nature of the materials submitted 
to it ;—so that, at one time, gravity acts upon them, and dis- 
poses them in horizontal layers, or causes them to droop in 
stalactites ; and at another, gravity is entirely defied, and 
the substances in solution are crystallised in bands of equal 
thickness on every side of the eell, It would require a course 
of lectures longer than these (I have a great mind,—you have 
behaved so saucily—to stay and give them) to describe to 
you the phenomena of this kind, in agates and chalcedonies 
only ;—nay, there is a single sarcophagus in the British Mu- 
seum, covered with grand sculpture of the 18th dynasty, 


118 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


which contains in the magnificent breccia (agates and jaspers 
imbedded in porphyry), out of which it is hewn, material for 
the thought of years; and record of the earth-sorrow of ages’ 
in comparison with the duration of which, the Egyptian let- 
ters tell us but the history of the evening and morning of a 
day. 

Agates, I think, of all stones, confess most of their past 
history ; but all crystallisation goes on under, and partly 
records, circumstances of this kind—circumstances of infinite 
variety, but always involving difficulty, interruption, and 
change of condition at different times. Observe, first, you 
have the whole mass of the rock in motion, either contracting 
itself, and so gradually widening the cracks; or being com- 
pressed, and thereby closing them, and crushing their edges ; 
—and, if one part of its substance be softer, at the given tem- 
perature, than another, probably squeezing that softer sub- ~ 
stance out into the veins. ‘Then the veins themselves, when 
the rock leaves them open by its contraction, act with various 
power of suction upon its substance ;—by capillary attraction 
when they are fine,—by that of pure vacuity when they are 
larger, or by changes in the constitution and condensation of 
the mixed gases with which they have been originally filled. 
Those gases themselves may be supplied in all variation of 
volume and power from below ; or, slowly, by the decompo- 
sition of the rocks themselves ; and, at changing temperatures, 
must exert relatively changing forces of decomposition and 
combination on the walls of the veins they fill; while water, 
at every degree of heat and pressure (from beds of everlasting 
ice, alternate with cliffs of native rock, to volumes of red hot, 
or white hot, steam), congeals, and drips, and throbs, and 
thrills, from crag to crag; and breathes from pulse to pulse 
of foaming or fiery arteries, whose beating is felt through 
chains of the great islands of the Indian seas, as your own 
pulses lift your bracelets, and makes whole kingdoms of the 
world quiver in deadly earthquake, as if they were lght as 
aspen leaves. And, remember, the poor little crystals have to 
live their lives, and mind their own affairs, in the midst of all 
this, as best they may. They are wonderfully like human 


ORYSTAL SORROWS. 3193 


ereatures,—forget all that is going on if they don’t see it, how- 
ever dreadful ; and never think what is to happen to-morrow. 
They are spiteful or loving, and indolent or painstaking, and 
orderly or licentious, with no thought whatever of the lava or 
the flood which may break over them any day ; and evaporate 
them into air-bubbles, or wash them into a solution of salts. 
And you may look at them, once understanding the surround- 
ing conditions of their fate, with an endless interest. You 
will see crowds of unfortunate little crystals, who have been 
forced to constitute themselves in a hurry, their dissolving 
element being fiercely scorched away ; you will see them doing 
their best, bright and numberless, but tiny. Then you will 
find indulged crystals, who have had centuries to form them- 
selves in, and have changed their mind and ways continually ; 
and have been tired, and taken heart again; and have been 
sick, and got well again ; and thought they would try a differ- 
ent diet, and then thought better of it ; and made but a poor 
use of their advantages, after all. And others you will see, 
who have begun life as wicked crystals ; and then have been 
impressed by alarming circumstances, and have become con- 
verted crystals, and behaved amazingly for a little while, and 
fallen away again, and ended, but discreditably, perhaps even 
in decomposition ; so that one doesn’t know what will become 
of them. And sometimes you will see deceitful crystals, that 
look as soft as velvet, and are deadly to all near them ; and 
sometimes you will see deceitful crystals, that seem flint-edged, 
like our little quartz-crystal of a housekeeper here, (hush! 
Dora,) and are endlessly gentle and true wherever gentleness 
and truth are needed. And sometimes you will see little 
child-crystals put to school like school-girls, and made to stand 
in rows; and taken the greatest care of, and taught how to 
hold themselves up, and behave: and sometimes you will see 
unhappy little child-crystals left to he about in the dirt, and 
pick up their living, and learn manners, where they can. And 
sometimes you will see fat crystals eating up thin ones, like 
ereat capitalists and little labourers ; and politico-economic crys- 
tals teaching the stupid ones how to eat each other, and cheat 
each other; and foolish crystals getting in the way of wise 


120 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


ones; and impatient crystals spoiling the plans of patient 
ones, irreparably ; just as things go on in the world. And 
sometimes you may see hypocritical crystals taking the shape 
of others, though they are nothing like in their minds ; and 
vampire crystals eating out the hearts of others; and hermit- 
erab crystals living in the shells of others ; and parasite crys- 
tals living on the means of others ; and courtier crystals glit- 
tering in attendance upon others ; and all these, besides the 
two great companies of war and peace, who ally themselves, 
resolutely to attack, or resolutely to defend. And for the 
close, you see the broad. shadow and deadly force of inevitable 
fate, above all this: you see the multitudes of crystals whose 
time has come ; not a set time, as with us, but yet a time, 
sooner or later, when they all must give up their crystal ghosts: 
—when the strength by which they grew, and the breath given 
them to breathe, pass away from them; and they fail, and 
are consumed, and vanish away; and another generation is 
brought to life, framed out of their ashes. 

Mary. It is very terrible. Is it not the complete fulfilment, 
down into the very dust, of that verse: ‘The whole creation 
groaneth and travaileth in pain’? 

L. I do not know that it is in pain, Mary: at least, the 
evidence tends to show that there is much more pleasure than 
pain, as soon as sensation becomes possible. 

Lverna. But then, surely, if we are told that it is pain, it 
must be pain? 

L. Yes ; if we are told; and told in the way you mean, 
Gucilla ; but nothing is said of the proportion to pleasure. 
Unmitigated pain would kill any of us in a few hours ; pain 
equal to our pleasures would make us loathe life ; the word 
itself cannot be applied to the lower conditions of matter, in 
its ordinary sense. But wait till to-morrow to ask me about 
this. ‘To-morrow is te be kept for questions and difficulties ; 
let us keep to the plain facts to-day. There is yet one group 
of facts connected with this rending of the rocks, which I 
especially want you to notice. You know, when you have 
mended a very old dress, quite meritoriously, till it won't 
mend any more~—— 


CRYSTAL SORROWS. 121 


Kaypt (interrupting). Could not you sometimes take gen- 
tlemen’s work to illustrate by ? 

L. Gentlemen's work is rarely so useful as yours, Egypt; 
and when itis useful, girls cannot easily understand it. 

Dora. Iam sure we should understand it better than gen- 
tlemen understand about sewing. 

L. My dear, I hope I always speak modestly, and under 
correction, when I touch upon matters of the kind too high 
for me; and besides, I never intend to speak otherwise than 
respectfully of sewing ;—though you alwavs seem to think I 
am laughing at you. Im all seriousness, illustrations from 
sewing are those which Neith likes me best to use ; and which 
young ladies ought to like everybody to use. What do you 
think the beautiful word ‘ wife’ comes from ? 

Dora (tossing her head). I don’t think it is a particularly 
beautiful word. 

L. Perhaps not. At your ages you may think ‘bride’ 
sounds better ; but wife’s the word for wear, depend upon it. 
It is the great word in which the English and Latin languages 
conquer the French and the Greek. I hope the French will 
some day get a word for it, yet, instead of their dreadful 
‘femme.’ But what do you think it comes from ? 

Dora. I never did think about it. 

L. Nor you, Sibyl? 

Stpyz. No; I thought it was on and stopped there. 

L. Yes; but the great good of Saxon words is, that they 
usually ss mean something. Wife means ‘weaver.’ You 
have all the right to call yourselves little ‘ housewives,’ when 
you sew neatly. 

Dora. But I don’t think we want to call ourselves ‘little 
housewives.’ 

L. You must either be house-Wives, or house-Moths ; re- 
member that. In the deep sense, you must either weave 
men’s fortunes, and embroider them ; or feed upon, and bring 
them to decay. You had better let me keep my sewing illus. 
tration, and help me out with it. 

Dora. Well we'll hear it, under protest. 

L. You have heard it before ; but with reference to other 


122 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


matters. When it is said, ‘no man putteth a piece of new 
cloth on an old garment, else it taketh from the old,’ does it 
not mean that the new piece tears the old one away at the 
sewn edge ? . 

Dora. Yes; certainly. 

L. And when you mend a decayed stuff with strong thread, 
does not the whole edge come away sometimes, when it tears 
again ? 

Dora. Yes; and then it is of no use to mend it any more. 

L. Well, the rocks don’t seem to think that: but the same 
thing happens to them continually, I told you they were full 
of rents, or veins. Large masses of mountain are sometimes 
as full of veins as your hand is; and of veins nearly as fine 
(only you know a rock vein does not mean a tube, but a crack 
or cleft). Now these clefts are mended, usually, with the 
strongest material the rock can find ; and often literally with 
threads ; for the gradually opening rent seems to draw the 
substance it is filled with into fibres, which cross from one 
side of it to the other, and are partly crystalline ; so that, 
when the crystals become distinct, the fissure has often ex- 
actly the look of a tear, brought together with strong cross 
stitches. Now when this is completely done, and all has been 
fastened and made firm, perhaps some new change of tem- 
perature may occur, and the rock begin to contract again. 
Then the old vein must open wider; or else another open 
elsewhere. If the old vein widen, it may do so at its centre ; 
but it constantly happens, with well filled veins, that the 
cross stitches are too strong to break ; the walls of the vein, 
instead, are torn away by them ; and another little supple- 
mentary vein—often three or four successively—-will be thus 
formed at the side of the first. 

Mary. That is really very much like our work. But what 
do the mountains use to sew with ? 

L. Quartz, whenever they can get it: pure limestones are 
obliged to be content with carbonate of lime ; but most mixed 
rocks can find some quartz for themselves. Here is a piece 
of black slate from the Buet: it looks merely like dry dark 
mud ;—you could not think there was any quartz in it; but 


CRYSTAL SORROWS. 123 


you see, its rents are all stitched together with beautiful white 
thread, which is the purest quartz, so close drawn that you 
can break it like flint, in the mass ; but, where it has been ex- 
posed to the weather, the fine fibrous structure is shown: 
and, more than that, you see the threads have been all twisted 
and pulled aside, this way and the other, by the warpings and 
shifting of the sides of the vein as it widened. 

Mary. It is wonderful! But is that going on still? Are 
the mountains being torn and sewn together again at this 
moment? 

L. Yes, certainly, my dear: but I think, just as certainly 
(though geologists differ on this matter), not with the violence, 
or on the scale, of their ancient ruin and renewal. All things 
seem to be tending towards a condition of at least temporary 
rest ; and that groaning and travailing of the creation, as, as- 
suredly, not wholly in pain, is not, in the full sense, ‘until 
now.’ 

Mary. I want so much to ask you about that! 

Sipyz. Yes; and we all want to ask you about a great many 
other things besides. 

L. It seems to me that you have got quite as many new 
ideas as are good for any of you at present: and I should not 
like to burden you with more ; but I must see that those you 
have are clear, if I can make them so; so we will have one 
more talk, for answer of questions, mainly. Think over all 
the ground, and make your difficulties thoroughly presentable. 
Then we'll see what we can make of them. 

Dora. They shall all be dressed in their very best; and 
curtsey as they come in. 

L. No, no, Dora; no curtseys, if you please. I had enough 
of them the day you all took a fit of reverence, and curtsied 
me out of the room. 

Dora. But, you know, we cured ourselves of the fault, at 
once, by that fit. We have never been the least respectful 
since. And the difficulties will only curtsey themselves out of 
the room, I hope ;—come in at one door—vanish at the other. 

L. What a pleasant world it would be, if all its difficulties 
were taught to behave so! However, one can generally make 


124 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


something, or (better still) nothing, or at least less, of them, 
if they thoroughly know their own minds; and your difficul- 
ties—I must say that for you, children,—generally do know 
‘their own minds, as you do yourselves. 

Dora. That is very kindly said for us. Some people would 
not allow so much as that girls had any minds to know. 

L. They will at least admit that you have minds to change, 
Dora. 

Mary. You might have left us the last speech, without a 
retouch. But we'll put our little minds, such as they are, in 
the best trim we can, for to-morrow. 


LECTURE X. 


THE CRYSTAL REST. 
Kwening. The fireside. ’s arm-chair in the comfortablest corner. 


L. (perceiving various arrangements being made of foot-stool, 
cushion, screen, and the like). Yes, yes, it’s all very fine! and 
’ Iam to sit here to be asked questions till supper-time, am I? 

Dora. I don’t think you can have any supper to-night :— 
we've got so much to ask. 

Lity. Oh, Miss Dora! We can fetch it him here, you 
know, so nicely! 

L. Yes, Lily, that will be pleasant, with competitive exami- 
nation going on over one’s plate; the competition being 
among the examiners. Really, now that I know what teasing 
things girls are, I don’t so much wonder that people used to 
put up patiently with the dragons who took them for supper. 
But I can’t help myself, I suppose ;—no thanks to St. George. 
Ask away, children, and I'll answer as civilly as may be. 

Dora. We don’t so much care about being answered civilly, 
as about not being asked things back again. 

LL. ‘Ayez seulement la patience que je le parle.’ There 
shall be no requitals. 

Dora. Well, then, first of all—What shall we ask first, 
Mary ? 

Mary. It does not matter. I think all the questions come 
into one, at last, nearly. 

Dora. You know, you always talk as if the crystals were 
alive ; and we never understand how much you are in play, 
and how much in earnest. That’s the first thing. 

L. Neither do I understand, myself, my dear, how much I 
am in earnest. The stones puzzle me as much asI puzzle 
you. They look as if they were alive, and make me speak as 
if they were ; and I do not in the least know how much truth, 


126 THE EHTHICS OF THE DUST. 


there is in the appearance. I’m not to ask things back again 
to-night, but all questions of this sort lead necessarily to the 
one main question, which we asked, before, in vain, ‘ What is 
it to be alive ?’ 

Dora. Yes; but we want to come back to that: for we’ve 
been reading scientific books about the ‘conservation of 
forces,’ and it seems all so grand, and wonderful; and the 
experiments are so pretty; and I suppose it must be all 
right: but then the books never speak as if there were any 
such thing as ‘ life.’ 

L. They mostly omit that part of the subject, certainly, 
Dora ; but they are beautifully right as far as they go; and 
life is not a convenient element to deal with. They seem to 
have been getting some of it into and out of bottles, in their 
‘ozone’ and ‘antizone’ lately; but they still know little of 
it : and, certainly, I know less. 

Dora. You promised not to be provoking, to-night. 

L. Wait aminute. Though, quite truly, I know less of the 
secrets of life than the philosophers do ; I yet know one cor- 
ner of ground on which we artists can stand, literally as 
‘Life Guards’ at bay, as steadily as the Guards at Inker- 
mann ; however hard the philosophers push. And you may 
stand with us, if once you learn to draw nicely. 

Dora. I’m sure we are all trying! but tell us where we may 
stand. ) 

L. You may always stand by Form, against Force. To a 
painter, the essential character of anything is the form of it; 
and the philosophers cannot touch that. They come and tell 
you, for instance, that there is as much heat, or motion, or 
calorific energy (or whatever else they like to call it), in a tea- 
kettle as in a Gier-eagle. Very good; that is so; and it is 
very interesting. It requires just as much heat as will boil 
the kettle, to take the Gier-eagle up to his nest ; and as much 
more to bring him down again on a hare or a partridge. 
But we painters, acknowledging the equality and similarity 
of the kettle and the bird in all scientifie respects, attach, 
for our part, our principal interest to the difference in their 
forms. For us, the primarily cognisable facts, in the two 


THE CRYSTAL REST. 127 


things, are, that the kettle has a spout, and the eagle a beak ; 
the one a lid on its back, the other a pair of wings ;—not to 
speak of the distinction also of volition, which the philoso- 
phers may properly call merely a form or mode of force ;— 
but then, to an artist, the form, or mode, is the gist of the 
business. The kettle chooses to sit still on the hob; the 
eagle to recline on the air. It is the fact of the choice, not 
the equal degree of temperature in the fulfilment of it, which 
appears to us the more interesting circumstance ;—though 
the other is very interesting too. Exceedingly so! Don’t 
laugh, children; the philosophers have been doing quite 
splendid work lately, in their own way: especially, the trans- 
formation of force into light is a great piece of systematised 
discovery ; and this notion about the sun’s being supplied 
with his flame by ceaseless meteoric hail is grand, and looks 
very likely to be true. Of course, it is only the old gun- 
lock,—flint and steel,—on a large scale: but the order and 
majesty of it are sublime. Still, we sculptors and painters 
eare little about it. ‘It is very fine,’ we say, ‘and very useful, 
this knocking the light out of the sun, or into it, by an eter- 
nal cataract of planets. But you may hail away, so, for ever, 
and you will not knock out what we can. Here is a bit of 
silver, not the size of half-a-crown, on which, with a single 
hammer stroke, one of us, two thousand and odd years ago, 
hit out the head of the Apollo of Clazomenz. It is merely a 
matter of form; butif any of you philosophers, with your 
whole planetary system to hammer with, can hit out such 
another bit of silver as this,—we will take off our hats to you. 
For the present, we keep them on.’ 

Mary. Yes, I understand ; and that is nice; but I don't 
think we shall any of us like having only form to depend upon. 

L. It was not neglected in the making of Eve, my dear. 

Mary. It does not seem to separate us from the dust of the 
ground. It is that breathing of the life which we want to 
understand. 

L. So you should: but hold fast to the form, and defend 
that first, as distinguished from the mere transition of forces. 
Discern the moulding hand of the potter commanding the 


128 THE HTHICS OF THE DUST. 


clay, from his merely beating foot, as it turns the wheel. If 
you can find incense, in the vase, afterwards,—well : but it is 
curious how far mere form will carry you ahead of the phil- 
osophers. For instance, with regard to the most interesting 
of all their modes of force—light ;—they never consider how 
far the existence of it depends on the putting of certain 
vitreous and nervous substances into the formal arrangement 
which we call an eye. The German philosophers began the 
attack, long ago, on the other side, by telling us, there was 
no such thing as light at all, unless we chose to see it: now, 
German and English, both, have reversed their engines, and 
insist that light would be exactly the same lght that it is, 
though nobody could ever see it. The fact being that the 
force must be there, and the eyes there ; and ‘light’ means 
the effect of the one on the other ;—and perhaps, also—(Plato 
saw farther into that mystery than any one has since, that I 
know of),—on something a little way within the eyes ; but we 
may stand quite safe, close behind the retina, and defy the 
philosophers. 

Srsyt. But I don’t care so much about defying the philoso- 
phers, if only one could get a clear idea of life, or soul, for 
one’s self. 

L. Well, Sibyl, you used to know more about it, in that 
cave of yours, than any of us. I was just going to ask you 
about inspiration, and the golden bough, and the like; only I 
remembered I was not to ask anything. But, will not you, 
at least, tell us whether the ideas of Life, as the power of 
putting things together, or ‘making’ them ; and of Death, as 
the power of pushing things separate, or ‘unmaking’ them, 
may not be very simply held in balance against each other? 

Srpyz. No, Iam not in my cave to-night ; and cannot tell. 
you anything. 

L. I think they may. .Modern Philosophy is a great sepa- 
rator ; it is little more than the expansion of Moliére’s great 
sentence, ‘Il s’ensuit de 1a, que tout ce qu'il y a de beau est 
dans les dictionnaires ; il n’y a que les mots qui sont trans- 
poses.” But when you used to be in your cave, Sibyl, and to 
be inspired, there was (and there remains still in some small 


THE CRYSTAL REST. 129 


measure), beyond the merely formative and sustaining power, 
another, which we painters call ‘ passion -—I don’t know what 
the philosophers call it; we know it makes people red, or 
white ; and therefore it must be something, itself ; and per- 
haps it is the most truly ‘ poetic’ or ‘making’ force of all, 
creating a world of its own out of a glance, or a sigh: and 
the want of passion is perhaps the truest death, or ‘unmaking’ — 
of everything ;—even of stones. By the way, you were all 
reading about that ascent of the Aiguille Verte, the other 
day ? 

Srpyt. Because you had told us it was so difficult, you 
thought it could not be ascended. 

L. Yes; I believed the Aiguille Verte would have held its 
own. But do you recollect what one of the climbers ex- 
claimed, when he first felt sure of reaching the summit? 

Srpyz. Yes, it was, ‘Oh, Aiguille Verte, vous étes morte, 
vous étes morte !’ 

L. That was true instinct. Real philosophic joy. Now 
can you at all fancy the difference between that feeling of 
triumph in a mountain’s death; and the exultation of your 
beloved poet, in its life— 


* Quantus Athos, aut quantus Eryx, aut ipse coruscis 
Quum fremit ilicibus quantus, gaudetque nivali 
Vertice, se attollens pater Apenninus ad auras.’ 


Dora. You must translate for us mere house-keepers, please, 
—whatever the cave-keepers may know about it. 

Mary. Will Dryden do? 

L. No. Dryden is a far way worse than nothing, and nobody 
will ‘do.’ You can’t translate it. But this is all you need 
know, that the lines are full of a passionate sense of the Apen- 
nines’ fatherhood, or protecting power over Italy ; and of sym- 
pathy with their joy in their snowy strength in heaven ; and 
with the same joy, shuddering through all the leaves of their 
forests. 

Mary. Yes, that is a difference indeed! but then, you know, 
one can’t help feeling that it is fanciful. It is very delightful 
to imagine the mountains to be alive ; but then,—are they alive? 


130 | THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


L. It seems to me, on the whole, Mary, that the feelings 
of the purest and most mightily passioned human souls are 
likely to be the truest. Not, indeed, if they do not desire to 
know the truth, or blind themselves to it that they may please 
themselves with passion ; for then they are no longer pure : 
but if, continually seeking and accepting the truth as far as it 
is discernible, they trust their Maker for the integrity of the 
instincts He has gifted them with, and rest in the sense of a 
higher truth which they cannot demonstrate, I think they 
will be most in the right, so. 

Dora and Jxsste (clapping their hands) Then we really 
may believe that the mountains are living? 

IL You may at least earnestly believe, that the presence of 
the spirit which culminates in your own life, shows itself in 
dawning, wherever the dust of the earth begins to assume 
any orderly and lovely state. You will find it impossible to 
separate this idea of gradated manifestation from that of the 
vital power. ‘Things are not either wholly alive, or wholly 
dead. They are less or more alive. Take the nearest, most 
easily examined instance—the life of a flower. Notice what a 
different degree and kind of life there is in the calyx and the 
corolla. The calyx is nothing but the swaddling clothes of 
the flower ; the child-blossom is bound up in it, hand and 
foot ; guarded in it, restrained by it, till the time of birth. 
The shell is hardly more subordinate to the germ in the egg, 
than the calyx to the blossom. It bursts at last; but it never 
lives as the corolla does. It may fall at the moment its task 
is fulfilled, as in the poppy; or wither gradually, as in the 
buttercup ; or persist in a ligneous apathy, after the flower is 
dead, as in the rose; or harmonise itself so as to share in the 
aspect of the real flower, as in the lily ; but it never shares in 
the corolla’s bright passion of life. And the gradations which 
thus exist between the different members of organic creat- 
ures, exist no less between the different ranges of organism. 
We know no higher or more energetic life than our own; but 
there seems to me this great good in the idea of gradation of 
life—it admits the idea of a life above us, in other creatures, as 
much nobler than ours, as ours is nobler than that of the dust. 


THE CRYSTAL REST. 131 


Mary. I am glad you have said that ; for I know Violet and 
Lucilla and May want to ask you something ; indeed, we all 
do ; only you frightened Violet so about the ant-hill, that she 
can’t say a word ; and May is afraid of your teasing her, too: 
but I know they are wondering why you are always telling 
them about heathen gods and goddesses, as if you half be- 
lieved in them; and you represent them as good; and then 
we see there is really a kind of truth in the stories about 
them ; and we are all puzzled: and, in this, we cannot even 
make our difficulty quite clear to ourselves ;—it would be 
such a long confused question, if we could ask you all we 
should like to know. 

L. Nor is it any wonder, Mary ; for this is indeed the long- 
est, and the most wildly confused question that reason can 
deal with; but I will try to give you, quickly, a few clear 
ideas about the heathen gods, which you may follow out 
afterwards, as your knowledge increases. 

Every heathen conception of deity in which you are likely 
to be interested, has three distinct characters :— 

I. It has a physical character. It represents some of the 
ereat powers or objects of nature—sun or moon, or heaven, 
or the winds, or the sea. And the fables first related about 
each deity represent, figuratively, the action of the natural 
power which it represents ; such as the rising and setting of 
the sun, the tides of the sea, and so on. 

Ii. It has an ethical character, and represents, in its his- 
tory, the moral dealings of God with man. Thus Apollo is 
first, physically, the sun contending with darkness ; but mor- 
ally, the power of divine life contending with corruption. 
Athena is, physically, the air; morally, the breathing of the 
divine spirit of wisdom. Neptune is, physically, the sea ; 
morally, the supreme power of agitating passion; and so on. 

III. It has, at last, a personal character ; and is realised in 
the minds of its worshippers as a living spirit, with whom 
men may speak face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. 

Now it is impossible to define exactly, how far, at any 
period of a national religion, these three ideas are mingled ; 
or how far one prevails over the other. Each enquirer 


132 THE ETHICS OF THE DUSY7. 


usually takes up one of these ideas, and pursues it, to the 
exclusion of the others: no impartial effort seems to have 
been made to discern the real state of the heathen imagina- 
tion in its successive phases. For the question is not at all 
what a mythological figure meant in its origin ; but what it 
became in each subsequent mental development of the nation 
inheriting the thought. Exactly in proportion to the mental 
and moral insight of any race, its mythological figures mean 
more to it, and become more real. An early and savage race 
means nothing more (because it has nothing more to mean) 
by its Apollo, than the sun ; while a cultivated Greek means 
every operation of divine intellect and justice. The Neith, of 
Egypt, meant, physically, little more than the blue of the air ; 
but the Greek, in a climate of alternate storm and calm, rep- 
resented the wild fringes of the storm-cloud by the serpents 
of her egis; and the lightning and cold of the highest 
thunder-clouds, by the Gorgon on her shield: while morally, 
the same types represented to him the mystery and changeful 
terror of knowledge, as her spear and helm its ruling and de- 
fensive power. And no study can be more interesting, cr 
more useful to you, than that of the different meanings which 
have been created by great nations, and great poets, out of 
mythological figures given them, at first, in utter simplicity. 
But when we approach them in their third, or personal, char- 
acter (and, for its power over the whole national mind, this is 
far the leading one), we are met at once by questions which 
may well put all of you at pause. Were they idly imagined 
to be real beings? and did they so usurp the place of the 
true God? Or were they actually real beings—evil spirits,— 
leading men away from the true God? Or is it conceivable 
that they might have been real beings,—good spirits,—en- 
trusted with some message from the true God? These were 
the questicns you wanted to ask ; were they not, Lucilla? 

Lucmus. Yes, indeed. 

L. Well, Lucilla, the answer will much depend upon the 
clearness of your faith in the personality of the spirits which 
are described in the book of your own rcligion ;—their per- 
sonality, observe, as distinguished from merely symbolical vis- 


THE ORYSTAL REST. 133 


ions. For instance, when Jeremiah has the vision of the 
seething pot with its mouth to the north, you know that this 
which he sees is not a real thing; but merely a significant 
dream. Also, when Zechariah sees the speckled horses among 
the myrtle trees in the bottom, you still may suppose the 
vision symbolical ;—you do not think of them as real spirits, 
like Pegasus, seen in the form of horses. But when you are 
told of the four riders in the Apocalypse, a distinct sense of 
personality begins to force itself upon you. And though you 
might, ina dull temper, think that (for one instance of all) the 
fourth rider on the pale horse was merely a symbol of the 
power of death,—in your stronger and more earnest moods 
you will rather conceive of him as a real and living angel. 
And when you look back from the vision of the Apocalypse 
to the account of the destruction of the Egyptian first-born, 
and of the army of Sennacherib, and again to David’s vision 
at the threshing floor of Araunah, the idea of personality in 
this death-angel becomes entirely defined, just as in the ap- 
pearance of the angels to Abraham, Manoah, or Mary. 

Now, when you have once consented to this idea of a per- 
sonal spirit, must not the question instantly follow: ‘Does 
this spirit exercise its functions towards one race of men only, 
or towards all men? Was it an angel of death to the Jew 
only, or to the Gentile also?’ You find a certain Divine 
agency made visible to a King of Israel, as an armed angel, 
executing vengeance, of which one special purpose was to 
lower his kingly pride. You find another (or perhaps the 
same) agency, made visible to a Christian prophet as an angel 
standing in the sun, calling to the birds that fly under heaven 
to come, that they may eat the flesh of kings. Is there any- 
thing impious in the thought that the same agency might 
have been expressed to a Greek king, or Greek seer, by sim1- 
lar visions ?—that this figure, standing in the sun, and armed 
with the sword, or the bow (whose arrows were drunk with 
blood), and exercising especially its power in the humiliation 
of the proud, might, at first, have been called only ‘ De- 
stroyer, and afterwards, as the light, or sun, of justice, was 
recognised in the chastisement, called also ‘ Physician’ or 


154 THE ETUICS OF THE DUST. 


‘Healer?’ If you feel hesitation in admitting the possibility 
of such a manifestation, I believe you will find it is caused, 
partly indeed by such trivial things as the difference to your 
ear between Greek and English terms; but, far more, by un- 
certainty in your own mind respecting the nature and truth 
of the visions spoken of in the Bible. Have any of you in- 
tently examined the nature of your belief in them? You, 
for instance, Lucilla, who think often, and seriously, of such 
things ? 

Luctua. No; I never could tell what to believe about them. 
I know they must be true in some way or other; and I like 
reading about them. 

L. Yes; and I like reading about them too, Lucilla; as I 
like reading other grand poetry. But, surely, we ought both 
to do more than like it? Will God be satisfied with us, think 
you, if we read His words merely for the sake of an entirely 
meaningless poetical sensation ? 

Luoma. But do not the people who give themselves to seek 
out the meaning of these things, often get very strange, and 
extravagant ? 

L. More than that, Lucilla. They often go mad. That 
abandonment of the mind to religious theory, or contempla- 
tion, is the very thing I have been pleading with you against. 
I never said you should set yourself to discover the mean- 
ines; but you should take careful pains to understand them, 
so far as they are clear; and you should always accurately 
ascertain the state of your mind about them. I want you 
never to read merely for the pleasure of fancy ; still less as a 
formal religious duty (else you might as well take to repeat- 
ing Paters at once ; for it is surely wiser to repeat one thing 
we understand, than read a thousand which we cannot). 
Hither, therefore, acknowledge the passages to be, for the 
present, unintelligible to you ; or else determine the sense in 
which you at present receive them ; or, at all events, the dif- 
ferent senses between which you clearly see that you must 
choose. Make either your belief, or your difficulty, definite ; 
but do not go on, all through your life, believing nothing in- 
telligently, and yet supposing that your having read the words 


THE CRYSTAL REST. 135 


of a divine book must give you the right to despise every reli- 
gion but your own. I assure you, strange as it may seem, our 
scorn of Greek tradition depends, not on our belief, but our 
disbelief, of our own traditions. We have, as yet, no sufficient 
clue to the meaning of either; but you will always find that, 
in proportion to the earnestness of our own faith, its tendency 
to accept a spiritual personality increases: and that the most 
vital and beautiful Christian temper rests joyfully in its con- 
viction of the multitudinous ministry of living angels, infinitely 
varied in rank and power. You all know one expression of 
the purest and happiest form of such faith, as it exists in 
modern times, in Richter’s lovely illustrations of the Lord’s 
rayer. The real and living death-angel, girt as a pilgrim for 
journey, and softly crowned with flowers, beckons at the dying 
mother’s door; child-angels sit talking face to face with mor- 
tal children, among the flowers ;—hold them by their little 
coats, lest they fall on the stairs ;—whisper dreams of heaven 
to them, leaning over their pillows; carry.the sound of the 
church bells for them far through the air ; and even descend- 
ing lower in service, fill little cups with honey, to hold out to the 
weary bee. By the way, Lily, did you tell the other children 
that story about your little sister, and Alice, and the sea? 

Luy. I told it to Alice, and to Miss Dora. I don’t think I 
did to anybody else. I thought it wasn’t worth. 

L. We shall think it worth a great deal now, Lily, if you 
will tell it us. How old is Dotty, again? I forget. 

Lity. She is not quite three ; but she has such odd little 
old ways, sometimes. 

L. And she was very fond of Alice ? 

Ly. Yes ; Alice was so good to her always! 

L. And so when Alice went away ? 

Lay. Oh, it was nothing, you know, to tell about; only it 
was strange at the time. 

L. Well; but I want you to tell it. 

Lay. The morning after Alice had gone, Dotty was very sad. 
and restless when she got up; and went about, looking into 
all the corners, as if she could find Alice in them, and at last 
she came to me, and said, ‘Is Alie gone over the great sea?’ 


136 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


And I said, ‘ Yes, she is gone over the great, deep sea, but she 
will come back again some day.’ Then Dotty looked round 
the room; and I had just poured some water out into the 
basin ; and Dotty ran to it, and got up on a chair, and dashed 
her hands through the water, again and again; and cried, 
‘Oh, deep, deep sea! send little Alie back to me.’ 

L. Isn’t that pretty, children? There’s a dear little heathen 
for you! The whole heart of Greek mythology is in that; the 
idea of a personal being in the elemental power ;— of its being 
moved by prayer ;—and of its presence everywhere, making 
the broken diffusion of the element sacred. 

Now, remember, the measure in which we may permit our- 
selves to think of this trusted and adored personality, in 
Greek, or in any other, mythology, as conceivably a shadow 
of truth, will depend on the degree in which we hold the 
Greeks, or other great nations, equal, or inferior, in privilege 
and character, to the Jews, or to ourselves. If we believe that 
the great Father would use the imagination of the Jew as an 
instrument by which to exalt and lead him ; but the imagina- 
tion of the Greek only to degrade and mislead him: if we can 
suppose that real angels were sent to minister to the Jews 
and to punish them ; but no angels, or only mocking spectra 
of angels, or even devils in the shapes of angels, to lead Lycur- 
gus and Leonidas from desolate cradle to hopeless grave :— 
and if we can think that it was only the influence of spectres, 
or the teaching of demons, which issued in the making of 
mothers like Cornelia, and of sons like Cleobis and Bito, we 
may, of course, reject the heathen Mythology in our privileged 
scorn : but, at least, we are bound to examine strictly by what 
faults of our own it has come to pass, that the ministry of real 
angels among ourselves is occasionally so ineffectual, as to end 
in the production of Cornelias who entrust their child-jewels 
to Charlotte Winsors for the better keeping of them ; and of 
sons like that one who, the other day, in France, beat his 
mother to death with a stick ; and was brought in by the jury, 
‘ euilty, with extenuating circumstances,’ 

May. Was that really possible ? 

L. Yes, my dear. I am not sure that I can lay my hand 


THE ORYSTAL REST. ee 


on the reference to it (and I should not have said ‘ the other 
day "—it was a year or two ago), but you may depend on the 
fact; and I could give you many like it, if I chose. There 
was a murder done in Russia, very lately, on a traveller. 
The murderess’s little daughter was in the way, and found it 
out, somehow. Her mother killed her, too, and put her into 
the oven. There is a peculiar horror about the relations be- 
tween parent and child, which are being now brought about 
by our variously degraded forms of European white slavery. 
Here is one reference, I see, in my notes on that story of 
Cleobis and Bito ; though I suppose I marked this chiefly 
for its quaintness, and the beautifully Christian names of the 
sons; but it is a good instance of the power of the King of 
the Valley of Diamonds * among us. 

In ‘ Galignani’ of July 21-22, 1862, is reported a trial of a 
farmer’s son in the department of the Yonne. The father, 
two years ago, at Malay le Grand, gave up his property to 
his two sons, on condition of being maintained by them. 
Simon fulfilled his agreement, but Pierre would not. The 
tribunal of Sens condemns Pierre to pay eighty-four francs a 
year to his father. Pierre replies, ‘he would rather die than 
pay it.’ Actually, returning home, he throws himself into the 
river, and the body is not found till next day. 

Mary. But—but—I can’t tell what you would have us 
think. Do you seriously mean that the Greeks were better 
than we are ; and that their gods were real angels ? 

L. No, my dear. I mean only that we know, in reality, 
less than nothing of the dealings of our Maker with our 
fellow-men ; and can only reason or conjecture safely about 
them, when we haye sincerely humble thoughts of ourselves 
anc our creeds. 

We owe to the Greeks every noble discipline in literature ; 
every radical principle of art; and every form of convenient 
beauty in our household furniture and daily occupations of 
life. Weare unable, ourselves, to make rational use of half 
that we have received from them : and, of our own, we have 
nothing but discoveries in science, and fine mechanical adap- 

* Note vi. 


138 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


tations of the discovered physical powers. On the other 
hand, the vice existing among certain classes, both of the rich 
and poor, in London, Paris, and Vienna, could have been 
conceived by a Spartan or Roman of the heroic ages only as 
possible in a Tartarus, where fiends were employed to teach, 
but not to punish, crime. It little becomes us to speak con~ 
temptuously of the religion of races to whom we stand in 
such relations; nor do I think any man of modesty or 
thoughtfulness will ever speak so of any religion, in which 
God has allowed one good man to die, trusting. 

The more readily we admit the possibility of our own cher- 
ished convictions being mixed with error, the more vital 
and helpful whatever is right in them will become: and no 
error is so conclusively fatal as the idea that God will not 
allow us to err, though He has allowed all other men to do 
so. There may be doubt of the meaning of other visions, 
but there is none respecting that of the dream of St. Peter ; 
and you may trust the Rock of the Church’s Foundation for 
true interpreting, when he learned from it that, ‘in every 
nation, he that feareth God and worketh righteousness, is 
accepted with Him.’ See that you understand what that 
righteousness means ; and set hand to it stoutly: you will 
always measure your neighbors’ creed kindly, in proportion 
to the substantial fruits of your own. Do not think you will 
ever get harm by striving to enter into the faith of others, 
and to sympathise, in imagination, with the guiding prin- 
ciples of their lives. So only can you justly love them, or 
pity them, or praise. By the gracious effort you will double, 
treble—nay, indefinitely multiply, at once the pleasure, the 
reverence, and the intelligence with which you read: and, 
believe me, it is wiser and holier, by the fire of your own 
faith to kindle the ashes of expired religions, than to let your 
soul shiver and stumble among their graves, through the 
gathering darkness, and communicable cold. 

Mary (afler some pause). We shall all like reading Greek 
history so much better after this! but it has put everything 
else out of our heads that we wanted to ask, 

L. I can tell you one of the things; and I might take 


THE CRYSTAL REST. 139 


credit for generosity in telling you; but I have a personal 
reason—Lucilla’s verse about the creation. 

Dora. Oh, yes—yes ; and its ‘ pain together, until now.’ 

L. I call you back to that, because I must warn you against 
an old error of my own. Somewhere in the fourth volume 
of ‘Modern Painters,’ I said that the earth seemed to have 
passed through its highest state: and that, after ascending 
by a series of phases, culminating in its habitation by man, 
it seems to be now gradually becoming less fit for that 
habitation. 

Mary. Yes, I remember. 

L. I wrote those passages under a very bitter impression 
of the gradual perishing of beauty from the loveliest scenes 
which I knew in the physical world ;—not in any doubtful 
way, such as I might have attributed to loss of sensation in 
myself—but by violent and definite physical action ; such as 
the filling up of the Lac de Chéde by landslips from the Ro- 
chers des Fiz;—the narrowing of the Lake Lucerne by the 
gaining delta of the stream of the Muotta-Thal, which, in the 
course of years, will cut the lake into two, as that of Brientz 
has been divided from that of Thun ;—the steady diminishing 
of the glaciers north of the Alps, and still more, of the sheets 
of snow on their southern slopes, which supply the refreshing 
streams of Lombardy :—the equally steady increase of deadly 
maremma round Pisa and Venice; and other such phenom- 
ena, quite measurably traceable within the limits even of short 
life, and unaccompanied, as it seemed, by redeeming or com- 
pensatory agencies. I am still under the same impression 
respecting the existing phenomena ; but I feel more strongly, 
every day, that no evidence to be collected within historical 
periods can be accepted as any clue to the great tendencies of 
geological change ; but that the great laws which never fail, 
. and to which all change is subordinate, appear such as to ac- 
complish a gradual advance to lovelier order, and more calmly, 
yet more deeply, animated Rest. Nor has this conviction ever 
fastened itself upon me more distinctly, than during my en- 
deayour to trace the laws which govern the lowly framework 
of thedust. For, through all the phases of its transition and 


140 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


dissolution, there seems to be a continual effort to raise itself 
into a higher state ; and a measured gain, through the fierce 
revulsion and slow renewal of the earth’s frame, in beauty, and 
order, and permanence. The soft white sediments of the sea 
draw themselves, in process of time, into smooth knots of 
sphered symmetry ; burdened and strained under increase of 
pressure, they pass into a nascent marble ; scorched by fervent 
heat, they brighten and blanch into the snowy rock of Paros and 
Carrara. The dark drift of the inland river, or stagnant slime of 
inland pool and lake, divides, or resolves itself as it dries, into . 
layers of its several elements; slowly purifying each by the 
patient withdrawal of it from the anarchy of the mass in 
which it was mingled. Contracted by increasing drought, 
till it must shatter into fragments, it infuses continually a 
finer ichor into the opening veins, and finds in its weakness 
the first rudiments of a perfect strength. Rent at last, rock 
from rock, nay, atom from atom, and tormented in lambent 
fire, it knits, through the fusion, the fibres of a perennial 
endurance ; and, during countless subsequent centuries, de- 
clining, or rather let me say, rising to repose, finishes the in- 
fallible lustre of its crystalline beauty, under harmonies of 
law which are wholly beneficent, because wholly inexorable. 


(The children seem pleased, but more inclined to think 
over these matters than to talk.) 


L. (after giving them a little time). Mary, I seldom ask you 
to read anything out of books of mine ; but there is a passage 
about the Law of Help, which I want you to read to the 
children now, because it is of no use merely to put it in other 
words for them. You know the place I mean, do not you? 

Mary. Yes (presently finding it) ; where shall I begin? 

L. Here; but the elder ones had better look afterwards at 
the piece which comes just before this. 


Mary (reads) : 


‘A pure or holy state of anything is that in which all its 
parts are helpful or consistent. The highest and first law of 
the universe, and the other name of life, is therefore, “help.” 
The other name of death is ‘‘separation.” Government and 


THE CRYSTAL REST. 141 


co-operation are in all things, and eternally, the laws of life. 
Anarchy and competition, eternally, and in all things, the laws 
of death. 

‘Perhaps the best, though the most familiar, example we 
could take of the nature and power of consistence, will be 
that of the possible changes in the dust we tread on. 

‘Exclusive of animal decay, we can hardly arrive at a more 
absolute type of impurity, than the mud or slime of a damp, 
over-trodden path, in the outskirts of a manufacturing town. 
I do not say mud of the road, because that is mixed with 
animal refuse ; but take merely an ounce or two of the blackest 
slime of a beaten footpath, on a rainy day, near a manufactur- 
ing town. That slime we shall find in most cases composed of 
clay (or brickdust, which is burnt clay), mixed with soot, a 
little sand and water. All these elements are at helpless war 
with each other, and destroy reciprocally each other’s nature 
and power: competing and fighting for place at every tread 
of your foot ; sand squeezing out clay, and clay squeezing 
out water, and soot meddling everywhere, and defiling the 
whole. Let us suppose that this ounce of mud is left in 
perfect rest, and that its elements gather together, like to 
like, so that their atoms may get into the closest relations 
possible. | 

‘Let the clay begin. Ridding itself of all foreign substance, 
it gradually becomes a white earth, already very beautiful, 
and fit, with help of congealing fire, to be made into finest 
porcelain, and painted on, and be kept in kings’ palaces. 
But such artificial consistence is not its best. Leave it still 
quiet, to follow its own instinct of unity, and it becomes, not 
only white but clear; not only clear, but hard; nor only 
clear and hard, but so set that it can deal with light in a 
wonderful way, and gather out of it the loveliest blue rays 
only, refusing the rest. We call it then a sapphire. 

‘Such being the consummation of the clay, we give similar 
permission of quiet to the sand. It also becomes, first, a 
white earth; then proceeds to grow clear and hard, and at 
last arranges itself in mysterious, infinitely fine parallel lines, 
which have the power of reflecting, not merely the blue rays, 
but the blue, green, purple, and red rays, in the greatest 
beauty in which they can be seen through any hard material 
whatsoever. We call it then an opal. 

‘In next order the soot sets to work. It cannot make itself 
white at first ; but, instead of being discouraged, tries harder 
and harder; and comes out clear at last; and the hardest 


142 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 


thing in the world: and for the blackness that it had, obtains 
in exchange the power of reflecting all the rays of the sun at 
once, in the vividest blaze that any solid thing can shoot. We 
call it then a diamond. 

‘Last of all, the water purifies, or unites itself; contented 
enough if it only reach the form of a dewdrop: but, if we 
insist on its proceeding to a more perfect consistence, it crys- 
tallises into the shape of a star. And, for the ounce of slime 
which we had by political economy of competition, we have, 
by political economy of co-operation, a sapphire, an opal, and 
a diamond, set in the midst of astar of snow.’ 


L. I have asked you to hear that, children, because, from 
all that we have seen in the work and play of these past days, 
I would have you gain at least one grave and enduring thought. 
The seeming trouble,—the unquestionable degradation,—of 
the elements of the physical earth, must passively wait the ap- 
pointed time of their repose, or their restoration. It can only be 
brought about for them by the agency of external law. But if, in- 
deed, there be a nobler life in us than in these strangely mov- 
ing atoms ;—if, indeed, there is an eternal difference between 
the fire which inhabits them, and that which animates us,-—it 
must be shown, by each of us in his appointed place, not 
merely in the patience, but in the activity of our hope; not 
merely by our desire, but our labour, for the time when the 
Dust of the generations of men shall be confirmed for founda- 
tions of the gates of the city of God. The human clay, now 
trampled and despised, will not be,—cannot be,—knit into 
strength and light by accident or ordinances of unassisted 
fate. By human cruelty and iniquity it has been afflicted ;— 
by human mercy and justice it must be raised: and, in all 
fear or questioning of what is or is not, the real message of 
creation, or of revelation, you may assuredly find perfect 
peace, if you are resolved to do that which your Lord has 
plainly required,—and content that He should indeed require 
no more of you,—than to do Justice, to love Mercy, and te 
walk humbly with Him. 


NOTES. 


Nore I. 
Page 24. 
‘That third pyramid of hers.’ 


THROUGHOUT the dialogues, it must be observed that ‘Sibyl’ is ad- 
dressed (when in play) as having once been the Cumean Sibyl; and 
‘Egypt’ as having been queen Nitocris,—the Cinderella, and ‘the 
greatest heroine and beauty’ of Egyptian story. The Egyptians called 
her ‘ Neith the Victorious’ (Nitocris), and the Greeks ‘Face of the 
Rose’ (Rhodope). Chaucer’s beautiful conception of Cleopatra in the 
‘Legend of Good Women,’ is much more founded on the traditions of 
her than on those of Cleopatra ; and, especially in its close, modified by 
Herodotus’s terrible story of the death of Nitocris, which, however, is 
mythologically nothing more than a part of the deep monotonous 
ancient dirge for the fulfilment of the earthly destiny of Beauty ; ‘She 
cast herself into a chamber full of ashes.’ 

I believe this Queen is now sufficiently ascertained to have either 
built, or increased to double its former size, the third pyramid of 
Gizeh : and the passage following in the text refers to an imaginary 
endeavour, by the Old Lecturer and the children together, to make out 
the description of that pyramid in the 167th page of the second volume 
of Bunsen’s ‘ Egypt’s Place in Universal History ’—ideal endeavour, — 
which ideally terminates as the Old Lecturer’s real endeavours to the 
same end always have terminated. There are, however, valuable notes 
respecting Nitocris at page 210 of the same volume: but the ‘ Early 
Egyptian History for the Young,’ by the author of Sidney Gray, con- 
tains, in a pleasant form, as much information as young readers will 
usually need. 


Note II. 
Page 265. 
‘ Pyrainid of Asychis.’ 
Tris pyramid, in mythology, divides with the Tower of Babel the 
shame, or vain glory, of being presumptuously, and first among great 


edifices, built with ‘brick for stone.’ This was the inscription on it- 
according to Herodotus :— 


144 NOTES. 


‘Despise me not, in comparing me with the pyramids of stone; for 
I have the pre-eminence over them, as far as Jupiter has pre: 
eminence over the gods. For, striking with staves into the pool, 
men gathered the clay which fastened itself to the staff, and 
kneaded bricks out of it, and so made me.’ 


The word I have translated ‘ kneaded’ is literally ‘drew ;’ in the sense 
of drawing, for which the Latins used ‘duco ;’ and thus gave us our 
‘ductile’ in speaking of dead clay, and Duke, Doge, or leader, in speak- 
ing of living clay. As the asserted pre-eminence of the edifice is made, 
in this inscription, to rest merely on the quantity of labour consumed 
in it, this pyramid is considered, in the text, as the type, at once, of 
the base building, and of the lost labour, of future ages, so far at least 
as thespirits of measured and mechanical effort deal with it: but Neith, 
exercising her power upon it, makes it a type of the work of wise and 
inspired builders. 


Nore IIL 


Page 25. 
‘ The Greater Pthah.’ 


It is impossible, as yet, to define with distinctness the personal agencies 
of the Egyptian deities. They are continually associated in function, 
or hold derivative powers, or are related to each other in mysterious 
triads ; uniting always symbolism of physical phenomena with real 
spiritual power. I have endeavoured partly to explain this in the text 
of the tenth Lecture: here, it is only necessary for the reader to know 
that the Greater Pthah more or less represents the formative power of 
order and measurement: he always stands on a four-square pedestal, 
‘the Egyptian cubit, metaphorically used as the hieroglyphic for truth ;’ 
his limbs are bound together, to signify fixed stability, as of a pillar; he 
has a measuring-rod in his hand; and at Phike, is represented as hold- 
ing an egg ona potter’s wheel; but I do not know if this symbol occurs 
in older sculptures. His usual title is the ‘Lord of Truth.’ Others, 
very beautiful: ‘King of the Two Worlds, of Gracious Countenance,’ 
‘Superintendent of the Great Abode,’ &c., are given by Mr. Birch in 
Arundale’s ‘Gallery of Antiquities,’ which I suppose is the book of best 
authority easily accessible. For the full titles and utterances of the 
gods, Rosellini is as yet the only—and I believe, still a very question- 
able—authority ; and Arundale’s little book, excellent in the text, has 
this great defect, that its drawings give the statues invariably a ludi 
crous or ignoble character. Readers who have not access to the originals 
must be warned against this frequent fault in modern illustration (espe- 
cially existing also in some of the painted casts of Gothic and Norman 


NOTES. 145 


work at the Crystal Palace). It is not owing to any wilful want of 
veracity: the plates in Arundale’s book are laboriously faithful: but 
the expressions of both face and body in a figure depend merely on 
emphasis of touch; and, in barbaric art, most draughtsmen emphasise 
what they plainly see—the barbarism ; and miss conditions of noble- 
ness, which they must approach the monument in a different temper 
before they will discover, and draw with great subtlety before they can 
express. 

The character of the Lower Pthah, or perhaps I ought rather to say, 
of Pthah in his lower office, is sufficiently explained in the text of the 
third Lecture; only the reader must be warned that the Egyptian 
symbolism of him by the beetle was not a scornful one; it expressed 
only the idea of his presence in the first elements of life. But it may 
not unjustly be used, in another sense, by us, who have seen his power 
in new development; and, even as it was, I cannot conceive that the 
Egyptians should have regarded their beetle-headed image of him 
(Champollion, ‘ Pantheon,’ pl. 12), without some occult scorn. It is the 
most painful of all their types of any beneficent power ; and even 
among those of evil influences, none can be compared with it, except 
its opposite, the tortoise-headed demon of indolence. 

Pasht (p. 24, line 82) is connected with the Greek Artemis, especially 
in her offices of judgment and vengeance. She is usually lioness- 
headed ; sometimes cat-headed ; her attributes seeming often trivial or 
ludicrous unless their full meaning is known ; but the enquiry is much 
too wide to be foNowed here. The cat was sacred to her ; or rather to 
the sun, and secondarily to her. She is alluded to in the text because 
she is always the companion of Pthah (called ‘the beloved of Pthah,’ 
it may be as Judgment, demanded and longed for by Truth); and it 
may be well for young readers to have this fixed in their minds, even 
by chance association. There are more statues of Pasht in the British 
Museum than of any other Egyptian deity ; several of them fine in 
workmanship; nearly all in dark stone, which may be, presumably, to 
connect her, as the moon, with the night; and in her office of avenger, 
with grief. 

Thoth (p. 27, line 17), is the Recording Angel of Judgment; and the 
Greek Hermes Phre (line 20), is the Sun. 

Neith is the Egyptian spirit of divine wisdom ; and the Athena of the 
Greeks. Nosuflicient statement of her many attributes, still less of their 
meanings, can be shortly given; but this should be noted respecting 
the veiling of the Egyptian image of her by vulture wings—that as she 
is, physically, the goddess of the air, this bird, the most powerful creat- 
ure of the air known to the Egyptians, naturally became her symbol. 
It had other significations ; but certainly this, when in connection with 
Neith. As representing her, it was the most important sign, next to the 
' winged sphere, in Egyptian sculpture ; and, just as in Homer, Athena 


146 NOTES. 


herself guides her heroes into battle, this symbol of wisdom, giving vie 
tory, floats over the heads of the Egyptian kings. The Greeks, repre- 
senting the goddess herself in human form, yet wouid not lose the 
power of the Egyptian symbol, and changed it into an angel of victory. 
First seen in loveliness on the early coins of Syracuse and Leontium, it 
gradually became the received sign of all conquest, and the so-called 
‘Victory’ of later times; which, little by little, loses its truth, and is 
accepted by the moderns only as a personification of victory itself, —not 
as an actual picture of the living Angel who led to victory. There is a 
wide difference between these two conceptions,—all the difference be- 
tween insincere poetry, and sincere religion. This I have also endeavy- 
oured farther to illustrate in the tenth Lecture ; there is however one 
part of Athena’s character which it would have been irrelevant to dweli 
upon there; yet which I must not wholly leave unnoticed. 

As the goddess of the air, she physically represents both its beneficent 
calm, and necessary tempest: other storm-deities (as Chrysaor and 
AHolus) being invested with a subordinate and more or less malignant 
function, which is exclusively their own, and is related to that of 
Athena as the power of Mars is related to hers in war. So also Virgil 
mikes her able to wield the lightning herself, while Juno cannot, but 
must pray for the intervention of Aiolus. She has precisely the corre- 
spondent moral authority over calmness of mind, and just anger. She 
soothes Achilles, as she incites Tydides ; her physical power over the 
air being always hinted correlatively. She grasps Achilles by his hair— 
as the wind would lift it—softly, id 


‘It fanned his cheek, it raised his hair, 
Like a meadow gale in spring,’ 


She does not merely turn the lance of Mars from Diomed ; but seizes it 
in both her hands, and casts it aside, with a sense of-making it vain, 
like chaff in the wind;—to the shout of Achilles, she adds her own 
voice of storm in heaven—but in all cases the moral power is still the 
principal one—most beautifully in that seizing of Achilles by the hair, 
which was the talisman of his life (because he had vowed it to the 
Sperchius if he returned in safety’, and which, in giving at Patroclus’ 
tomb, he, knowingly, yields up the hope of return to his country, and 
signifies that he will die with his friend. Achilles and Tydides are, 
above all other heroes, aided by her in war, because their prevailing 
characters are the desire of justice, united in both with deep affections ; 
and, in Achilles, with a passionate tenderness, which is the real root of 
his passionate anger. Ulysses is her favourite chiefly in her office as 
the goddess of conduct and design, 


NOTES. 147 


Note IV. 


Page 54. 
‘ Geometrical limitations.’ 


[vr is difficult, without a tedious accuracy, or without full illustration, to 
express the complete relations of crystalline structure, which dispose 
minerals to take, at different times, fibrous, massive, or foliated forms; 
and I am afraid this chapter will be generally skipped by the reader: 
yet the arrangement itself will be found useful, if kept broadly in 
mind ; and the transitions of state are of the highest interest, if the sub- 
ject is entered upon with any earnestness. It would have been vain to 
add to the scheme of this little volume any account of the geometrical 
forms of crystals: an available one, though still far too difficult and too 
copious, has been arranged by the Rev. Mr. Mitchell, for Orr’s ‘ Circle 
of the Sciences’; and, I believe, the ‘nets’ of crystals, which are 
therein given to be cut out with scissors and put prettily together, will 
be found more conquerable by young ladies than by other students. 
They should also, when an opportunity occurs, be shown, at any public 
library, the diagram of the crystallisation of quartz referred to poles, at 
p. 8 of Cloizaux’s ‘Manuel de MinéGralogie’: that they may know what 
work is; and what the sub/ect is. 

With a view to more careful examination of the nascent states of 
silica, I have made no allusion in this volume to the influence of mere 
segregation, as connected with the crystalline power. It has only been 
recently, during the study of the breccias alluded to in page 113, that I 
have fully seen the extent to which this singular force often modifies 
rocks in which at first its influence might hardly have been suspected ; 
many apparent conglomerates being in reality formed chiefly by segre- 
gation, combined with mysterious brokenly-zoned structures, like those 
of some malachites. I hope some day to know more of these and sev- 
eral other mineral phenomena (especially of those connected with the 
relative sizes of crystals), which otherwise I should have endeavoured 
to describe in this volume. 





Nore V. 


Page 102. 
‘St. Barbara.’ 
1 WOULD have given the legends of St. Barbara, and St. Thomas, if I 
had thought it always well for young readers to have everything at once 
told them which they may wish to know. ‘They will remember the 
stories better after taking some trouble to find them; and the text is in 


148 NOTES. 


telligible enough as it stands. The idea of St. Barbara, as there given 
is founded partly on her legend in Peter de Natalibus, partly on the 
beautiful photograph of Van Eyck’s picture of her at Antwerp: which 
was some time since published at Lille. 


Note VI. 


Page 137. 
‘ King of the Valley of Diamonds.’ 


ISABEL interrupted the Lecturer here, and was briefly bid to hold her 
tongue ; which gave rise to some talk, apart, afterwards, between L. 
and Sibyl, of which a word or two may be perhaps advisably set down. 

SrBpyuL. We shall spoil Isabel, certainly, if we don’t mind: I was glad 
you stopped her, and yet sorry ; for she wanted so much to ask about 
the Valley of Diamonds again, and she has worked so hard at it, and 
made it nearly all out by herself. She recollected Elisha’s throwing in 
the meal, which nobody else did. 

L. But what did she want to ask ? 

Srpyt. About the mulberry trees and the serpents ; we are all stopped 
by that. Won’t you tell us what it means ? 

L. Now, Sibyl, Iam sure you, who never explained yourself, should 
be the last to expect others to do so. I hate explaining myself, 

SrpyL. And yet how often you complain of other people for not say- 
ing what they meant. How I have heard you growl over the three 
stone steps to purgatory ; for instance! 

L. Yes; because Dante’s meaning is worth getting at; but mine mat- 
ters nothing: at least, if ever I think it is of any consequence, I speak 
it as clearly as may be. But you may make anything you like of the 
serpent forests. I could have helped you to find out what they were, 
by giving a little more detail, but it would have been tiresome. 

Srpyu. It is much more tiresome not to find out. Tell us, please, as 
Isabel says, because we feel so stupid. 

L. There is no stupidity ; you could not possibly do more than guess 
at anything so vague. But I think, you, Sibyl, at least, might have 
recollected what first dyed the mulberry ? 

Sipyni. SoI did; but that helped little; I thought of Dante’s forest 
of suicides, too, but you would not simply have borrowed that ? 

L. No. If I had had strength to use it, I should have stolen it, to 
beat into another shape ; not borrowed it. But that idea of souls in 
trees is as old as the world; or at least, as the world of man. And I did 
mean that there were souls in those dark branches; the souls of all 
those who had perished in misery through the pursuit of riches; and 
that the river was of their blood, gathering gradually, and flowing out 


NOTES. 149 


of the valley. That I meant the serpents for the souls of those who had 
lived carelessly and wantonly in their riches ; and who have all their 
sins forgiven by the world, because they are rich: and therefore they 
have seven crimson-crested heads, for the seven mortal sins; of which 
they are proud: and these, and the memory and report of them, are the 
chief causes of temptation to others, as showing the pleasantness and ab- 
solving power of riches; so that thus they are singing serpents. And 
the worms are the souls of the common money-getters and traffickers, 
who do nothing but eat and spin: and who gain habitually by the dis- 
tress or foolishness of others (as you see the butchers have been gaining 
out of the panic at the cattle plague, among the poor),—so they are made 
to eat the dark leaves, and spin, and perish. . 

Srpyu. And the souls of the great, cruel, rich people who oppress the 
poor, and lend money to government to make unjust war, where are 
they ? 

L. They change into the ice, I believe, and are knit with the gold; 
and make the grave-dust of the valley. I believe so, at least, for no one 
ever sees those souls anywhere. 

(SIBYL ceases questioning. ) 

ISABEL (who has crept up to her side without any one’s seeing). Oh, 
Sibyl, please ask him about the fire-flies ! 

L. What, you there, mousie! No; I won’t tell either Sibyl or you 
about the fire-flies; nor a word more about anything else. You ought 
to be little fire-flies yourselves, and find your way in twilight by your 
own wits 

IsABEL. But you said they burned, you know ? 

L. Yes; and you may be fire-flies that way too, some of you, before 
long, though I did not mean that. Away with you, children. You 
have thought enough for to day. 


NOTE TO SECOND EDITION. 


Sentence out of letter from May (who is staying with Isabel just now 
at Cassel), dated 15th June, 1877 :— 

‘“‘T am reading the Ethics with a nice Irish girl who is staying here, 
and she’s just as puzzled as I’ve always been about the fire-flies, and we 
both want to know so much.—Please be a very nice old Lecturer, and 
teil us, won’t you ?” 

Well, May, you never were a vain girl ; so could scarcely guess that I 
meant them for the light, unpursued vanities, which yet blind us, con- 
fused among the stars. One evening, as I came late into Siena, the 
fire flies were flying high on a stormy sirocco wind,—the stars themselves 
no brighter, and all their host seeming, at moments, to fade as the in 
sects faded. 


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On the first mild—or, at least, the first bright—day of 
March, in this year, I walked through what was once a 
country lane, between the hostelry of the Half-moon at the 
bottom of Herne Hill, and the secluded College of Dulwich. 

In my young days, Croxsted Lane was a green bye-road 
traversable for some distance by carts; but rarely so tray- 
ersed, and, for the most part, little else than a narrow strip 
of untilled field, separated by blackberry hedges from the 
better cared-for meadows on each side of it: growing more 
weeds, therefore, than they, and perhaps in spring a primrose 
or two—white archangel—daisies plenty, and purple thistles 
in autumn. A slender rivulet, boasting little of its bright- 
ness, for there are no springs at Dulwich, yet fed purely 
enough by the rain and morning dew, here trickled—there 
loitered—through the long grass beneath the hedges, and 
expanded itself, where it might, into moderately clear and 
deep pools, in which, under their veils of duck-weed, a fresh- 
water shell or two, sundry curious little skipping shrimps, 
any quantity of tadpoles in their time, and even sometimes a 
tittlebat, offered themselves to my boyhood’s pleased, and not 
inaccurate, observation. There, my mother and I used to 
gather the first buds of the hawthorn ; and there, in after 
years, I used to walk in the summer shadows, as in a place 
wilder and sweeter than our garden, to think over any 
passage I wanted to make better than usual in Modern 
Painters, 

So, as aforesaid, on the first kindly day of this year, being 
thoughtful more than usual of those old times, I went to look 
again at the place. 


154 FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 


Often, both in those days, and since, I have put myself 
hard to it, vainly, to find words wherewith to tell of beautiful 
things ; but beauty has been in the world since the world 
was made, and human language can make a shift, somehow, 
to give account of it, whereas the peculiar forces of devasta- 
tion induced by modern city life have only entered the world 
lately ; and no existing terms of language known to me are 
enough to describe the forms of filth, and modes of ruin, that 
varied themselves along the course of Croxsted Lane. The 
fields on each side of it are now mostly dug up for building, 
or cut through into gaunt corners and nooks of blind ground 
by the wild crossings and concurrencies of three railroads. 
Half a dozen handfuls of new cottages, with Doric doors, 
are dropped about here and there among the gashed ground : 
the lane itself, now entirely grassless, is a deep-rutted, heavy- 
hillocked cart-road, diverging gatelessly into various brick- 
fields or pieces of waste ; and bordered on each side by heaps 
of—Hades only knows what !—mixed dust of every unclean 
thing that can crumble in drought, and mildew of every unclean 
thing that can rot or rust in damp: ashes and rags, beer-bottles 
and old shoes, battered pans, smashed crockery, shreds of 
nameless clothes, door-sweepings, floor-sweepings, kitchen gar- 
bage, back-garden sewage, old iron, rotten timber jagged with 
out-torn nails, cigar-ends, pipe-bowls, cinders, bones, and ord- 
ure, indescribable ; and, variously kneaded into, sticking to, or 
fluttering foully here and there over all these,—remnants 
broadcast, of every manner of newspaper, advertisement or 
big-lettered bill, festering and flaunting out their last pub- 
licity in the pits of stinking dust and mortal slime. 

The lane ends now where its prettiest windings once began ; 
being cut off by a cross-road leading out of Dulwich to a minor 
railway station: and on the other side of this road, what was 
of old the daintiest intricacy of its solitude is changed into a 
straight, and evenly macadamised carriage drive, between new 
houses of extreme respectability, with good attached gardens 
and offices—most of these tenements being larger—all more 
pretentious, and many, I imagine, held at greatly higher rent 
than my father’s, tenanted for twenty years at Herne Hill. 


FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 155 


And it became matter of curious meditation to me what must 
here become of children resembling my poor little dreamy 
quondam self in temper, and thus brought up at the same dis- 
tance from London, and in the same or better circumstances of 
worldly fortune ; but with only Croxsted Lane in its present 
condition for their country walk. The trimly kept road be- 
fore their doors, such as one used to see in the fashionable 
suburbs of Cheltenham or Leamington, presents nothing to 
their study but gravel, and gas-lamp posts ; the modern ad- 
dition of a vermilion letter-pillar contributing indeed to the 
splendour, but scarcely to the interest of the scene; and a 
child of any sense or fancy would hastily contrive escape from 
such a barren desert of politeness, and betake itself to investi- 
gation, such as might be feasible, of the natural history of 
Croxsted Lane. 

But, for its sense or fancy, what food, or stimulus, can it 
find, in that foul causeway of its youthful pilgrimage? What 
would have happened to myself, so directed, I cannot clearly 
imagine. Possibly, I might have got interested in the old 
iron and wood-shavings ; and become an engineer or a car- 
penter: but for the children of to-day, accustomed from the 
instant they are out of their cradles, to the sight of this in- 
finite nastiness, prevailing as a fixed condition of the universe, 
over the face of nature, and accompanying all the operations 
of industrious man, what is to be the scholastic issue? unless, 
indeed, the thrill of scientific vanity in the primary analysis 
of some unheard-of process of corruption—or the reward of 
microscopic research in the sight of worms with more legs, 
and acari of more curious generation than ever vivified the 
more simply smelling plasma of antiquity. 

One result of such elementary education is, however, al- 
ready certain; namely, that the pleasure which we may con- 
ceive taken by the children of the coming time, in the analysis 
of physical corruption, guides, into fields more dangerous and 
desolate, the expatiation of imaginative literature: and that 
the reactions of moral disease upon itself, and the conditions 
of languidly monstrous character developed in an atmosphere 
of low vitality, have become the most valued material of mod- 


156 FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 


ern fiction, and the most eagerly discussed texts of modern 
philosophy. 

The many concurrent reasons for this mischief may, I 
believe, be massed under a few general heads. 

I. There is first the hot fermentation and unwholesome 
secrecy of the population crowded into large cities, each mote 
in the misery lighter, as an individual soul, than a dead leaf, 
but becoming oppressive and infectious each to his neighbour, 
in the smoking mass of decay. The resulting modes of men- 
tal ruin and distress are continually new; and in a certain 
sense, worth study in their monstrosity : they have accordingly 
developed a corresponding science of fiction, concerned mainly 
with the description of such forms of disease, like the botany 
of leaf-lichens. 

In De Balzac’s story of Father Goriot, a grocer makes a 
large fortune, of which he spends on himself as much as may 
keep him alive ; and on his two daughters, all that can pro- 
mote their pleasures or their pride. He marries them to men 
of rank, supplies their secret expenses, and provides for his 
favourite a separate and clandestine establishment with her 
lover. On his deathbed, he sends for this favourite daughter, 
who wishes to come, and hesitates for a quarter of an hour 
between doing so, and going to a ball at which it has been for 
the last month her chief ambition to be seen. She finally 
goes to the ball. 

This story is, of course, one of which the violent contrasts 
and spectral catastrophe could only take place, or be con- 
ceived, in a large city. A village grocer cannot make a large 
fortune, cannot marry his daughters to titled squires, and 
cannot die without having his children brought to him, if in 
the neighbourhood, by fear of village gossip, if for no better 
cause. 

II. But a much more profound feeling than this mere 
curiosity of science in morbid phenomena is concerned in the 
production of the carefullest forms of modern fiction. The 
disgrace and grief resulting from the mere trampling pressure 
and electric friction of town life, become to the sufferers 
peculiarly mysterious in their undeservedness, and frightful 


FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 157 


in their inevitableness. The power of all surroundings over 
them for evil; the incapacity of their own minds to refuse the 
pollution, and of their own wills to oppose the weight, of the 
staggering mass that chokes and crushes them into perdition, 
brings every law of healthy existence into question with them, 
and every alleged method of help and hope into doubt. In- 
dignation, without any calming faith in justice, and self-con- 
tempt, without any curative self-reproach, dull the intelli- 
gence, and degrade the conscience, into sullen incredulity of 
all sunshine outside the dunghill, or breeze beyond the waft- 
ing of its impurity ; and at last a philosophy develops itself, 
partly satiric, partly consolatory, concerned only with the 
regenerative vigour of manure, and the necessary obscurities 
of fimetic Providence; showing how eyerybody’s fault is 
somebody else’s, how infection has no law, digestion no will, 
and profitable dirt no dishonour. 

And thus an elaborate and ingenious scholasticism, in what 
may be called the Divinity of Decomposition, has established 
itself in connection with the more recent forms of romance, 
giving them at once a complacent tone of clerical dignity, and 
an agreeable dash of heretical impudence ; while the incul- 
cated doctrine has the double advantage of needing no labori- 
ous scholarship for its foundation, and no painful self-denial 
for its practice. 

Iil. The monotony of life in the central streets of any great 
modern city, but especially in those of London, where every 
emotion intended to be derived by men from the sight of 
nature, or the sense of art, is forbidden for ever, leaves the 
craving of the heart for a sincere, yet changeful, interest, to be 
fed from one source only. Under natural conditions the 
degree of mental excitement necessary to bodily health is pro- 
vided by the course of the seasons, and the various skill and 
fortune of agriculture. In the country every morning of the 
year brings with it a new aspect of springing or fading 
nature ; a new duty to be fulfilled upon earth, and a new 
promise or warning in heaven. No day is without its inno- 
cent hope, its special prudence, its kindly gift, and its sublime 
danger ; and in every process of wise husbandry, and every 


158 FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 


effort of contending or remedial courage, the wholesome pas 

sions, pride, and bodily power of the labourer are excited and 

exerted in happiest unison. The companionship of domestic, 

the care of serviceable, animals, soften and enlarge his life 
with lowly charities, and discipline him in familiar wisdoms 
and unboastful fortitudes ; while the divine laws of seed-time- 
which cannot be recalled, harvest which cannot be hastened, 

and winter in which no man can work, compel the impatiences 
and coveting of his heart into labour too submissive to be 
anxious, and rest too sweet to be wanton. What thought can 
enough comprehend the contrast between such life, and that 
in streets where summer and winter are only alternations of 
heat and cold ; where snow never fell white, nor sunshine 
clear ; where the ground is only a pavement, and the sky no 
more than the glass roof of an arcade; where the utmost 
power of a storm is to choke the gutters, and the finest magic 
of spring, to change mud into dust : where—chief and most 
fatal difference in state, there is no interest of occupation for 
any of the inhabitants but the routine of counter or desk 
within doors, and the effort to pass each other without col- 
lision outside ; so that from morning to evening the only pos- 
sible variation of the monotony of the hours, and lightening’ 
of the penalty of existence, must be some kind of mischief, 

limited, unless by more than ordinary godsend of fatality, to 
the fall of a horse, or the slitting of a pocket. 

I said that under these laws of inanition, the craving of the’ 
human heart for some kind of excitement could be supplied 
from one source only. It might have been thought by any 
other than a sternly tentative philosopher, that the denial of 
their natural food to human feelings would have provoked a 
reactionary desire for it ; and that the dreariness of the street 
would have been gilded by dreams of pastoral felicity. Hx- 
perience has shown the fact to be otherwise ; the thoroughly 
trained Londoner can enjoy no other excitement than that to 
which he has been accustomed, but asks for that in continually 
more ardent or more virulent concentration ; and the ulti-_ 
mate power of fiction to entertain him is by varying to his 
fancy the modes, and defining for his dulness the horrors, of 


FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 159 


Death. In the single novel of Bleak House there are nine 
deaths (or left for death’s, in the drop scene) carefully wrought 
out or led up to, either by way of pleasing surprise, as the 
baby’s at the brickmaker’s, or finished in their threatenings 
and sufferings, with as much enjoyment as can be contrived 
in the anticipation, and as much pathology as can be concen- 
trated in the description. Under the following varieties of 
method :— 


One by assassination : Mr. Tulkinghorn. 
One by starvation, with dis ind Joe. 

One by chagrin ; Richard. 

One by spontaneous Paraetiticts Mr. Krook. 

One by sorrow : ; . Lady Dedlock’s lover. 
One by remorse : ; . Lady Dedlock. 

One by insanity : ‘ . Miss Flite. 

One by paralysis , ; . Sir Leicester. 


Besides the baby, by fever, and a lively young Frenchwoman 
left to be hanged. 

And all this, observe, not in a tragic, adventurous, or mili- 
tary story, but merely as the further enlivenment of a narrative 
intended to be amusing; and as a properly representative 
average of the statistics of civilian mortality in the centre of 
London. 

Observe further, and chiefly. It is not the mere number of 
deaths (which, if we count the odd troopers in the last scene, 
is exceeded in Old Mortality, and reached, within one or two, 
both in Waverley and Guy Mannering) that marks the peculiar 
tone of the modern novel. It is the fact that all these deaths, 
but one, are of inoffensive, or at least in the world’s estimate 
respectable persons ; and that they are all grotesquely either 
violent or miserable, purporting thus to illustrate the modern 
theology that the appointed destiny of a large average of our 
population is to die like rats in a drain, either by trap or 
poison. Not, indeed, that a lawyer in full practice can be 
usually supposed as faultless in the eye of heaven as a dove 
or a woodcock ; but it is not, in former divinities, thought the 


160 FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 


will of Providence that he should be dropped by a shot from 
a client behind his fire-screen, and retrieved in the morning 
by his housemaid under the chandelier. Neither is Lady 
Dedlock less reprehensible in her conduct than many women 
of fashion have been and will be: but it would not therefore 
have been thought poetically just, in old-fashioned morality, 
that she should be found by her daughter lying dead, with 
her face in the mud of a St. Giles’s churchyard. 

In the work of the great masters death is always either 
heroic, deserved, or quiet and natural (unless their purpose be 
totally and deeply tragic, when collateral meaner death is per- 
mitted, like that of Polonius or Roderigo). In Old Mortality, 
four of the deaths, Bothwell’s, Ensign Grahame’s, Macbriar’s, 
and Evandale’s, are magnificently heroic ; Burley’s and Oli- 
phant’s long deserved, and swift; the troopers’, met in the 
discharge of their military duty, and the old miser’s, as gentle 
as the passing of a cloud, and almost beautiful in its last words 
of—now unselfish—care. 


‘Ailie’ (he aye ca’d me Ailie, we were auld acquaintance,) ‘ Ailie, 
take ye care and haud the gear weel thegither; for the name of Morton 
of Milnwood’s gane out like the last sough of an anld sang.’ And sae 
he fell out o’ ae dwam into another, and ne er spak a word mair, unless 
it were something we cou’dna mak out, about a dipped candle being 
gude eneugh to see to dee wi’. He coud ne’er bide to see a moulded 
ane, and there was ane, by ill luck, on the table. 


In Guy Mannering, the murder, though unpremeditated, of 
a single person, (himself not entirely innocent, but at least by 
heartlessness in a cruel function earning his fate,) is avenged 
to the uttermost on all the men conscious of the crime; Mr. 
Bertram’s death, like that of his wife, brief in pain, and each 
told in the space of half-a-dozen lines; and that of the 
heroine of the tale, self-devoted, heroic in the highest, and 
happy. 

Nor is it ever to be forgotten, in the comparison of Scott's 
with inferior work, that his own splendid powers were, even 
“n early life, tainted, and in his latter years destroyed, by 
modern conditions of commercial excitement, then first, but 


FICTION—FAIR AND FOUT, 161 


rapidly, developing themselves. There are parts even in his 
best novels coloured to meet tastes which he despised; and 
“aany pages written in his later ones to lengthen his article 
sor the indiscriminate market. 

But there was one weakness of which his healthy mind re- 
mained incapable to the last. In modern stories prepared for 
more refined or fastidious audiences than those of Dickens, 
the funereal excitement is obtained, for the most part, not by 
the infliction of violent or disgusting death; but in the sus- 
pense, the pathos, and the more or less by all felt, and recog- 
nised, mortal phenomena of the sick-room. The temptation, 
to weak writers, of this order of subject is especially great, 
because the study of it from the living—or dying—model is 
so easy, and to many has been the most impressive part of 
their own personal experience ; while, if the description be 
given even with mediocre accuracy, a very large section of 
readers will admire its truth, and cherish its melancholy. 
Few authors of second or third rate genius can either record 
or invent a probable conversation in ordinary life ; but few, 
on the other hand, are so destitute of observant faculty as to 
be unable to chronicle the broken syllables and languid move- 
ments of an invalid. The easily rendered, and too surely 
recognised, image of familiar suffering is felt at once to be 
real where all else had been false ; and the historian of the gest- 
ures of fever and words of delirium can count on the applause 
of a gratified audience as surely as the dramatist who intro- 
duces on the stage of his flagging action a carriage that can 
be driven or a fountain that will flow. But the masters of 
strong imagination disdain such work, and those of deep sen- 
sibility shrink from it.’ Only under conditions of personal 
weakness, presently to be noted, would Scott comply with the 
cravings of his lower audience in scenes of terror like the 
death of Front-de-Boeuf. But he never once withdrew the 


1 Nell, in the Old Curiosity Shop, was simply killed for the market, as 
a butcher kills a lamb (see Forster’s Zzfe), and Paul was written under 
the same conditions of illness which affected Scott—a part of the omi- 
nous palsies, grasping alike author and subject, both in Dombey and 
Attle Dorrat. 


162 FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL, 


sacred curtain of the sick-chamber, nor permitted the disgrace 
of wanton tears round the humiliation of strength, or the 
wreck of beauty. 

IV. No exception to this law of reverence will be found in 
the scenes in Coeur de Lion’s illness introductory to the prin- 
cipal incident in the Talisman. An inferior writer would 
have made the king charge in imagination at the head of his 
chivalry, or wander in dreams by the brooks of Aquitaine ; but 
Scott allows us to learn no more startling symptoms of the 
king’s malady than that he was restless and impatient, and 
could not wear his armour. Nor is any bodily weakness, or 
crisis of danger, permitted to disturb for an instant the royalty 
of intelligence and heart in which he examines, trusts and 
obeys the physician whom his attendants fear. 

Yet the choice of the main subject in this story and its 
companion—the trial, to a point of utter torture, of knightly 
faith, and several passages in the conduct of both, more es- 
pecially the exaggerated scenes in the House of Baldringham, 
and hermitage of Engedi, are signs of the gradual decline in 
force of intellect and soul which those who love Scott best 
have done him the worst injustice in their endeavours to dis- 
guise or deny. The mean anxieties, moral humiliations, and 
mercilessly demanded brain-toil, which killed him, show their 
sepulchral grasp for many and many a year before their final 
victory ; and the states of more or less dulled, distorted, and 
polluted imagination which culminate in Castle Dangerous, 
cast a Stygian hue over St. Ronan’s Well, The Fair Maid of 
Perth, and Anne of Geierstein, which lowers them, the first 
altogether, the other two at frequent intervals, into fellowship 
with the normal disease which festers throughout the whole 
body of our lower fictitious literature. 

Fictitious! I use the ambiguous word deliberately ; for it 
is impossible to distinguish in these tales of the prison-house 
how far their vice and gloom are thrown into their manufact- 
ure only to meet a vile demand, and how far they are an in- 
tegral condition of thought in the minds of men trained 
from their youth up in the knowledge of Londinian and Pari 
sian misery. ‘The speciality of the plague is a delight in the 


HICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 163 


exposition of the relations between guilt and decrepitude ; 
and I call the results of it literature ‘of the prison-house,’ be- 
cause the thwarted habits of body and mind, which are the 
punishment of reckless crowding in cities, become, in the 
issue of that punishment, frightful subjects of exclusive inter- 
est to themselves ; and the art of fiction in which they finally 
delight is only the more studied arrangement and illustration, 
by coloured firelights, of the daily bulletins of their own 
wretchedness, in the prison calendar, the police news, and 
the hospital report. 

The reader will perhaps be surprised at my separating the 
greatest work of Dickens, Oliver Twist, with honour, from 
the loathsome mass to which it typically belongs. That book 
is an earnest and uncaricatured record of states of criminal 
life, written with didactic purpose, full of the gravest instruc- 
tion, nor destitute of pathetic studies of noble passion. Even 
the Mysteries of Paris and Gaboriau's Crime d’Augival are 
raised, by their definiteness of historical intention and fore- 
warning anxiety, far above the level of their order, and may 
be accepted as photographic evidence of an otherwise incredi- 
ble civilisation, corrupted in the infernal fact of it, down to 
the genesis of such figures as the Vicomte d’Augival, the 
Stabber,’ the Skeleton, and the She-wolf. But the effectual 
head of the whole cretinous school is the renowned novel in 
which the hunchbacked lover watches the execution of his 


1Chourineur’ not striking with dagger-point, but ripping with knife- 
edge. Yet Ido him, and La Lonve, injustice in classing them with the 
two others ; they are put together only as parts in the same phantasm. 
Compare with La Louve, the strength of wild virtue in the ‘ Louvé- 
cienne’ (Lucienne) of Gaboriau—she, province-born and bred; and op- 
posed to Parisian civilisation in the character of her sempstress friend. 
‘De ce Paris, ot elle ¢tait née, elle savuit tout—elle connaissait tout. 
Rien ne l’étonnait, nul ne l’intimidait. Sa science des détails materiels 
de l’existence était inconcevable. Impossible de la duper!—Eh bien! 
cette fille si laborieuse et si 6conome n’avait mcme pas la plus vague 
notion des sentiments qui sont l’honneur de la femme. Je n’avais pas 
idee d’une si compléte absence de sens moral; dune si inconsciente 
dépravation, d’une impudence si effrontément naive.’—L’ Argent des 
autres, vol. i, p. 358. 


164 FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 


mistress from the tower of Notre-Dame; and its strength 
passes gradually away into the anatomical preparations, for 
the general market, of novels like Poor Miss Finch, in which 
the heroine is blind, the hero epileptic, and the obnoxious 
brother is found dead with his hands dropped off, in the Arc- 
tic regions. ' 


' The reader who cares to seek it may easily find medical evidence of 
the physical effects of certain states of brain disease in producing es- 
pecially images of truncated and Hermes-like deformity, complicated 
with grossness. Horace, in the Hpodes, scoffs at it, but not without hor- 
ror. Luca Signorelli and Raphael in their arabesques are deeply struck 
by it: Durer, defying and playing with it alternately, is almost beaten 
down again and again in the distorted faces, hewing halberts, and sus- 
pended satyrs of his arabesques round the polyglot Lord’s Prayer ; it 
takes entire possession of Balzac in the Contes Drolatiques ; it struck 
Scott in the earliest days of his childish ‘ visions’ intensified by the axe- 
stroke murder of his grand aunt; L. i. 142, and see close of this note. 
It chose for him the subject of the Heart of Midlothian, and produced 
afterwards all the recurrent ideas of executions, tainting JVigel, almost 
spoiling Quentin Durward—utterly the Fair Maid of Perth: and cul- 
minating in Bizarro, L. x. 149. It suggested all the deaths by falling, 
or sinking, as in delirious sleep—Kennedy, Eveline Neville (nearly 
repeated in Clara Mowbray), Amy Robsart, the Master of Ravenswood 
in the quicksand, Morris, and Corporal Grace-be-here—compare the 
dream of Gride, in Nicholas Nickleby, and Dickens’s own last words, on 
the ground, (so also, in my own inflammation of the brain, two yearg 
ago, I dreamed that I fell through the earth and came out on the other 
side). In its grotesque and distorting power, it produced all the figures 
of the Lay Goblin, Pacolet, Flibbertigibbet, Cockledemoy, Geoffrey 
Hudson, Fenella, and Nectabanus ; in Dickens it in like manner gives 
Quilp, Krook, Smike, Smallweed, Miss Mowcher, and the dwarfs and 
wax-work of Nell’s caravan ; and runs entirely wild in Barnaby Rudge, 
where, with a corps de drame composed of one idiot, two madmen, a 
gentleman fool who is also a villain, a shop-boy fool who is also a black- 
guard, a hangman, a shrivelled virago, and a doll in ribands—carrying 
this company through riot and fire, till he hangs the hangman, one of 
the madmen, his mother, and the idiot, runs the gentleman-fool through 
in a bloody duel, and burns and crushes the shop-boy fool into shape- 
lessness, he cannot yet be content without shooting the spare lover’s leg 
off, and marrying him to the doll in a wooden one ; the shapeless shop- 
boy beiug finally also married in ¢200 wooden ones. It is this mutilation, 
observe, which is the very sign manual of the plague ; joined, in the 
artistic forms of it, with a love of thorniness—(in their mystic root, the 


FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 165 


This literature of the Prison-house, understanding by the 
word not only the cell of Newgate, but also and even more defi- 
nitely the cell of the Hotel-Dieu, the Hopital des Fous, and 
the grated corridor with the dripping slabs of the Morgue, 


truncation of the limbless serpent and the spines of the dragon’s wing. 
Compare Modern Painters, vol. iv., ‘Chapter on the Mountain Gloom,’ 
s. 19) ; and in all forms of it, with petrifaction or loss of power by cold 
in the blood, whence the last Darwinian process of the witches’ charm 
—‘ cool it with a baboon’s blood, then the charm 1s firm and good,’ The 
two frescoes in the colossal handbills which have lately decorated the 
streets of London (the baboon with the mirror, and the Maskelyne and 
Cooke decapitation) are the final English forms of Raphael’s arabesque 
under this influence; and it is well worth while to get the number for 
the week ending April 3, 1880, of Young Folks—‘A magazine of in- 
structive and entertaining literature for boys and girls of all ages,’ con- 
taining ‘A Sequel to Desdichado’ (the modern development of Ivanhoe), 
in which a quite monumental example of the kind of art in questiom 
will be found as a leading illustration of this characteristic sentence, 
‘¢ See, good Cerberus,’’ said Sir Rupert, ‘‘ my hand has been struck off. 
You must make mea hand of tron, one with springs in it, so that I can 
make tt grasp a@ dagger.” The text is also, as it professes to be, instruc- 
tive ; being the ultimate degeneration of what I have above called the 
‘folly’ of Ivanhoe ; for folly begets folly down, and down; and what- 
ever Scott and Turner did wrong has thousands of imitators—their 
wisdom none will so much as hear, how much less follow! 

In both of the Masters, it is always to be remembered that the evil 
and good are alike conditions of literal vzston: and therefore also, in- 
separably connected with the state of the health. I believe the first 
elements of all Scott’s errors were in the milk of his consumptive nurse, 
which all but killed him as an infant, L. i. 19—and was without doubt 
the cause of the teething fever that ended in his lameness (L. i. 20). 
Then came (if the reader cares to know what I mean by Fors, let him 
read the page carefully) the fearful accidents to his only sister, and her 
death, L. i. 17; then the madness of his nurse, who planned his own 
murder (21), then the stories continually told him of the executions at 
Carlisle (24), his aunt’s husband having seen them; issuing, he himself 
scarcely knows how, in the unacountable terror that came upon him at 
the sight of statuary, 31—especially Jacob’s ladder ; then the murder of 
Mrs. Swinton, and finally the nearly fatal bursting of the bloodvessel at 
Kelso, with the succeeding nervous illness, 65-67—solaced, while he 
was being ‘bled and blistered till he had scarcely a pulse left,’ by that 
history of the Knights of Malta—fondly dwelt on and realised by actual 
modelling of their fortress, which returned to his mind for the theme 
of its last effort in passing away. 


166 FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 


having its central root thus in the Ile de Paris—or historically 
and pre-eminently the ‘ Cité de Paris "—is, when understood 
deeply, the precise counter-corruption of the religion of the 
Sainte Chapelle, just as the worst forms of bodily and mental 
ruin are the corruption of love. I have therefore called it 
‘Fiction mécroyante,’ with literal accuracy and precision ; 
according to the explanation of the word which the reader 
may find in any good French dictionary,’ and round its Arctic 
pole in the Morgue, he may gather into one Caina of gelid 
putrescence the entire product of modern infidel imagination, 
amusing itself with destruction of the body, and busying 
itself with aberration of the mind. 

Aberration, palsy, or plague, observe, as: distinguished from 
normal evil, just as the venom of rabies or cholera differs 
from that of a wasp or a viper. The life of the insect and 
‘serpent deserves, or at least permits, our thoughts; not so 
the stages of agony in the fury-driven hound. There is some 
excuse, indeed, for the pathologic labour of the modern noy- 
elist in the fact that he cannot easily, in a city population, 
find a healthy mind to vivisect : but the greater part of such 
amateur surgery is the struggle, in an epoch of wild literary 
competition, to obtain novelty of material. ‘The varieties of 
aspect and colour in healthy fruit, be it sweet or sour, may 
be within certain limits described exhaustively. Not so the 
blotches of its conceivable blight : and while the symmetries 
of integral human character can only be traced by harmonious 
and tender skill, like the branches of a living tree, the faults 
and gaps of one gnawed away by corroding accident can be 
shuffled into senseless change like the wards of a Chubb lock. 

V. It is needless to insist on the vast field for this dice-cast 
or card-dealt calamity which opens itself in the ignorance, 
money-interest, and mean passion, of city marriage. Peasants 
know each other as children—meet, as they grow up in test- 
ing labour; and if a stout farmer’s son marries a handless 
girl, it is his own fault. Also in the patrician families of the 
field, the young people know what they are doing, and marry 


1 ¢Se dit par dénigrement, d’un chrétien qui ne croit pas les dogmes 
de sa religion.’—Fleming, vol. ii, p. 659, 


FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 167 


a neighbouring estate, or a covetable title, with some concep- 
tion of the responsibilities they undertake. But even among 
- these, their season in the confused metropolis creates licentious 
and fortuitous temptation before unknown ; and in the lower 
middle orders, an entirely new kingdom of discomfort and 
disgrace has been preached to them in the doctrines of un- 
bridled pleasure which are merely an apology for their pecul- 
iar forms of illbreeding. It is quite curious how often the 
catastrophe, or the leading interest, of a modern novel, turns 
upon the want, both in maid and bachelor, of the common 
self-command which was taught to their grandmothers and 
grandfathers as the first element of ordinarily decent behav- 
iour. Rashly inquiring the other day the plot of a modern 
story from a female friend, I elicited, after some hesitation, 
that it hinged mainly on the young people’s ‘ forgetting them- 
selves in a boat;’ and I perceive it to be accepted as nearly 
an axiom in the code of modern civic chivalry that the strength 
of amiable sentiment is proved by our incapacity on proper 
occasions to express, and on improper ones to control it. The 
pride of a gentleman of the old school used to be in his power 
of saying what he meant, and being silent when he ought, 
(not to speak of the higher nobleness which bestowed love 
where it was honourable, and reverence where it was due) ; 
but the automatic amours and involuntary proposals of recent 
romance acknowledge little further law of morality than the 
instinct of an insect, or the effervescence of a chemical mixt- 
ure. 

There is a pretty little story of Alfred de Musset’s,—La 
Mouche, which, if the reader cares to glance at it, will save 
me further trouble in explaining the disciplinarian authority 
of mere old-fashioned politeness, as in some sort protective of 
higher things. It describes, with much grace and precision, 
a state of society by no means pre-eminently virtuous, or en- 
thusiastically heroic; in which many people do extremely 
wrong, and none sublimely right. But as there are heights 
of which the achievement is unattempted, there are abysses 
to which fall is barred ; neither accident nor temptation will 
make any of the principal personages swerve from an adopted 


168 FICTION—FAIR ANL FOUL. 


resolution, or violate an accepted principle of honour ; people 
are expected as a matter of course to speak with propriety on 
occasion, and to wait with patience when they are bid: those 
who do wrong, admit it ; those who do right don’t boast of 
it ; everybody knows his own mind, and everybody has good 
manners. 

Nor must it be forgotten that in the worst days of the self- 
indulgence which destroyed the aristocracies of Europe, their 
vices, however licentious, were never, in the fatal modern 
sense, ‘unprincipled.’ The vainest believed in virtue; the 
vilest respected it. ‘Chaque chose avait son nom,’’ and the 
severest of English moralists recognises the accurate wit, the 
lofty intellect, and the unfretted benevolence, which redeemed 
from vitiated surroundings the circle of d'Alembert and Mar- 
montel.’ 

I have said, with too slight praise, that the vainest, in those 
days, ‘believed’ in virtue. Beautiful and heroic examples of 
it were always before them ; nor was it without the secret sig- 
nificance attaching to what may seem the least accidents in 
the work of a master, that Scott gave to both his heroines of 
the age of revolution in England the name of the queen of the 
highest order of English chivalry.* 

It is to say little for the types of youth and maid which 
alone Scott felt it a joy to imagine, or thought it honourable 
to portray, that they act and feel in a sphere where they are 
never for an instant liable to any of the weaknesses which 
disturb the calm, or shake the resolution, of chastity and 
courage in a modern novel. Scott lived in a country and time, 


1¢ A son nom,’ properly. The sentence is one of Victor Cherbuliez’s, 
in Prosper Randoce, which is full of other valuable ones. See the old 
nurse’s ‘ici bas les choses vont de travers, comme un chien qui va & 
vépres, p. 93 ; and compare Prosper’s treasures, ‘la petite Vénus, et le 
petit Christ d’ivoire,’ p. 121; also Madame Brehanne’s request for the 
divertissement of ‘ quelque belle batterie 4 coups de couteau’ with Did- 
ier’s answer. ‘Hélas! madame, vous jouez de malheur, ici dans la 
Drome, l’on se massacre aussi peu que possible,’ p. 33. 

*Edgeworth’s Ziwles (Hunter, 1827), ‘ Harrington and Ormond,’ vol, 
iii. p. 260. 

* Alice of Salisbury, Alice Lee, Alice Bridgnorth. 


FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 169 


when, from highest to lowest, but chiefly in that dignified and 
nobly severe’ middle class to which he himself belonged, a 
habit of serene and stainless thought was as natural to the peo- 
ple as their mountain air. Women like Rose Bradwardine and 
Ailie Dinmont were the grace and guard of almost every house- 
hold (God be praised that the race of them is not yet extinct, 
for all that Mall or Boulevard can do), and it has perhaps es- 
caped the notice of even attentive readers that the compara- 
tively uninteresting character of Sir Walter’s heroes had always 
been studied among a class of youths who were simply ineca- 
pable of doing anything seriously wrong ; and could only be 
embarrassed by the consequences of their levity or impru- 
dence. 

But there is another difference in the woof of a Waverley 
novel from the cobweb of a modern one, which depends on 
Scott’s larger view of human life. Marriage is by no means, 
in his conception of man and woman, the most important busi- 
ness of their existence ;* nor love the only reward to be pro- 
posed to their virtue or exertion. It is not in his reading of 
the laws of Providence a necessity that virtue should, either 
by love or any other external blessing, he rewarded at all; * 
and matriage is in all cases thought of as a constituent of the 
happiness of life, but not as its only interest, still less its only 
aim. And upon analysing with some care the motives of his 
principal stories, we shall often find that the love in them is 
merely a light by which the sterner features of character are 
to be irradiated, and that the marriage of the hero is as sub- 
ordinate to the main bent of the story as Henry the Fifth’s 


1 Scott’s father was habitually ascetic. ‘Ihave heard his son tell that 
it was common with him, if any one observed that the soup was good, 
to taste it again, and say, ‘‘ Yes—it is too good, bairns,’’ and dash a 
tumbler of cold water into his plate.—Lockharts Life (Black, Edin- 
burgh, 1869), vol. i. p. 812. In other places I refer to this book in the 
simple form of ‘ L.’ 

2 A young lady sang to me, just before I copied out this page for press, 
a Miss Somebody’s ‘ great song,’ ‘Live, and Love, and Die.’ Had it 
been written for nothing better than silkworms, it should at least have 
added—Spin. 

’ See passage of introduction to Jvanhoe, wisely quoted in L. vi 106. 


170 FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 


courtship of Katherine is to the battle of Agincourt. Nay, the 
fortunes of the person who is nominally the subject of the tale 
are often little more than a background on which grander 
figures are to be drawn, and deeper fates forth-shadowed. The 
judgments between the faith and chivalry of Scotland at Drum- 
clog and Bothwell bridge owe little of their interest in the 
mind of a sensible reader to the fact that the captain of the 
Popinjay is carried a prisoner to one battle, and returns a 
prisoner from the other: and Scott himself, while he watches 
the white sail that bears Queen Mary for the last time from 
her native land, very nearly forgets to finish his novel, or to 
tell us—and with small sense of any consolation to be had out 
of that minor circumstance,—that ‘ Roland and Catherine were 
united, spite of their differing faiths.’ 

Neither let it be thought for an instant that the slight, and 
sometimes scornful, glance with which Scott passes over scenes 
which a novelist of our own day would have analysed with the 
airs of a philosopher, and painted with the curiosity of a gos- 
sip, indicate any absence in his heart of sympathy with the 
ereat and sacred elements of personal happiness. An era like 
ours, which has with diligence and ostentation swept its heart 
clear of all the passions once known as loyalty, patriotism, and 
piety, necessarily magnifies the apparent force of the one re- 
maining sentiment which sighs through the barren chambers, 
or clings inextricably round the chasms of ruin; nor can it 
but regard with awe the unconquerable spirit which still 
tempts or betrays the sagacities of selfishness into error or 
frenzy which is believed to be love. 

That Scott was never himself, in the sense of the phrase as 
employed by lovers of the Parisian school, ‘ivre d'amour,’ 
may be admitted without prejudice to his sensibility,’ and that 
he never knew ‘lamor che move |] sol e l’altre stelle,’ was the 
chief, though unrecognised, calamity of his deeply chequered 
life. But the reader of honour and feeling will not therefore 
suppose that the love which Miss Vernon sacrifices, stooping 
for an instant from her horse, is of less noble stamp, or less 


1 See below, note, p. 25, on the conclusion of Woddstock. 


FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL, 171 


enduring faith, than that which troubles and degrades the 
whole existence of Consuelo ; or that the affection of Jeanie 
Deans for the companion of her childhood, drawn like a field 
of soft blue heaven beyond the cloudy wrack of her sorrow, 
is less fully in possession of her soul than the hesitating and 
self-reproachful impulses under which a modern heroine for- 
gets herself in a boat, or compromises herself in the cool of 
the evening. 

I do not wish to return over the waste ground we have tray- 
ersed, comparing, point by point, Scott’s manner with those 
of Bermondsey and the Faubourgs; but it may be, perhaps, 
‘interesting at this moment to examine, with illustration from 
those Waverley novels which have so lately retracted the atten- 
tion of a fair and gentle public, the universal conditions of 
‘style,’ rightly so called, which are in all ages, and above all 
local currents or wavering tides of temporary manners, pil- 
lars of what is for ever strong, and models of what is for ever 
fair. 

But I must first define, and that within strict horizon, the 
works of Scott, in which his perfect mind may be known, and 
his chosen ways understood. 

His great works of prose fiction, excepting only the first 
half-volume of Waverley, were all written in twelve years, 
1814-26 (of his own age forty-three to fifty-five), the actual 
time employed in their composition being not more than a 
couple of months out of each year ; and during that time only 
the morning hours and spare minutes during the professional 
day. ‘Though the first volume of Waverley was begun long 
ago, and actually lost for a time, yet the other two were begun 
and finished between the 4th of June and the first of July, 
during all which I attended my duty in court, and proceeded 
without loss of time or hindrance of business.’ 

Few of the maxims for the enforcement of which, in Mod- 
ern Painters, long ago, I got the general character of a lover 
of paradox, are more singular, or more sure, than the state- 
ment, apparently so encouraging to the idle, that if a great 


LT iw. 177. 


172 FICTION--FAIR AND FOUL. 


thing can be done at all, it can be done easily. But it is in 
that kind of ease with which a tree blossoms after long years 
of gathered strength, and all Scott’s great writings were the 
recreations of a mind confirmed in dutiful labour, and rich 
with organic gathering of boundless resource. 

Omitting from our count the two minor and ill-finished 
sketches of the Black Dwarf and Legend of Montrose, and, for 
a reason presently to be noticed, the unhappy S¢. Ronan’s, the 
memorable romances of Scott are eighteen, falling into three 
distinct groups, containing six each. 

The first group is distinguished from the other two by 
characters of strength and felicity which never more appeared 
after Scott was struck down by his terrific illness in 1819. 
It includes Waverley, Guy Mannering, The Antiquary, lob Roy, 
Old Mortality, and The Heart of Midlothian. 

The composition of these occupied the mornings of his 
happiest days, between the ages of 43 and 48. On the 8th of 
April, 1819 (he was 48 on the preceding 15th of August) he 
began for the first time to dictate—being unable for the ex- 
ertion of writing—The Bride of Lammermuir, ‘the affection- 
ate Laidlaw beseeching him to stop dictating, when his audi- 
ble suffering filled every pause. ‘ Nay, Willie,” he answered 
“only see that the doors are fast. I would fain keep all the 
cry as well as all the wool to ourselves; but as for giving 
over work, that can only be when I am in woollen.”’* From 
this time forward the brightness of joy and sincerity of in- 
evitable humour, which perfected the imagery of the earlier 
novels, are wholly absent, except in the two short intervals of 
health unaccountably restored, in which he wrote Redgauntlet 
and Nigel. 

It is strange, but only a part of the general simplicity of 
Scott’s genius, that these revivals of earlier power were un- 
conscious, and that the time of extreme weakness in which he 
wrote St. Ronan’s Well, was that in which he first asserted his 
own restoration. 

It is also a deeply interesting characteristic of his noble 
nature that he never gains anything by sickness ; the whole 

t Thovie OT. 


FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 173 


man breathes or faints as one creature; the ache that stiffens 
a limb chills his heart, and every pang of the stomach 
paralyses the brain. It is not so with inferior minds, in the 
workings of which it is often impossible to distinguish native 
from narcotic fancy, and throbs of conscience from those of 
indigestion. Whether in exaltation or languor, the colours of 
mind are always morbid, which gleam on the sea for the 
‘Ancient Mariner,’ and through the casements on ‘St. Agnes’ 
Eye ;’ but Scott is at once blinded and stultified by sickness ; 
never has a fit of the cramp without spoiling a chapter, and is 
perhaps the only author of vivid imagination who never wrote 
a foolish word but when he was ill. 

It remains only to be noticed on this point that any 
strong natural excitement, affecting the deeper springs of his 
heart, would at once restore his intellectual powers in all 
their fullness, and that, far towards their sunset: but that 
the strong will on which he prided himself, though it could 
trample upon pain, silence grief, and compel industry, never 
could warm his imagination, or clear the judgment in his 
darker hours. 

I believe that this power of the heart over the intellect is 
common to all great men: but what the special character of 
emotion was, that alone could lift Scott above the power of 
death, I am about to ask the reader, in a little while, to ob- 
serve with joyful care. 

The first series of romances then, above named, are all that 
exhibit the emphasis of his unharmed faculties. The second 
group, composed in the three years subsequent to illness all 
but mortal, bear every one of them more or less the seal of it. 

They consist of the Bride of Lammermuir, Ivanhoe, the 
Monastery, the Abbot, Kenilworth, and the Pirate." The marks 
of broken health on all these are essentially twofold—pre- 
vailing melancholy, and fantastic improbability. Three of 
the tales are agonizingly tragic, the Abbot scarcely less so in 
its main event, and /vuanhoe deeply wounded through all its 


1*One other such novel, and there’s an end; but who can last for 
ever ? who ever lasted so long ?’—Sydney Smith (of the Pirate) te 
Jeffrey, December 30, 1821. (Letters, vol. ii. p. 223.) 


174 FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 


bright panoply ; while even in that most powerful of the 
series, the impossible archeries and axestrokes, the incredibly 
opportune appearances of Locksley, the death of Ulrica, and 
the resuscitation of Athelstane, are partly boyish, partly fever- 
ish. Caleb in the Bride, Triptolemus and Halcro in the 
Pirate, are all laborious, and the first incongruous; half a 
volume of the Abbot is spent in extremely dull detail of Ro- 
land’s relations with his fellow-servants and his mistress, 
which have nothing whatever to do with the future story ; 
and the lady of Avenel herself disappears after the first 
volume, ‘like a snaw wreath when it’s thaw, Jeanie.’ The 
public has for itself pronounced on the Monastery, though as 
much too harshly as it has foolishly praised the horrors of 
Ravenswood and the nonsense of Jvanhoe ; because the modern 
public finds in the torture and adventure of these, the kind 
of excitement which it seeks at an opera, while it has no 
sympathy whatever with the pastoral happiness of Glendearg, 
or with the lingering simplicities of superstition which give 
historical likelihood to the legend of the White Lady. 

But both this despised tale and its sequel have Scott's 
heart in them. The first was begun to refresh himself in the 
intervals of artificial labour on Jvanhoe. ‘It was a relief,’ he 
said, ‘to interlay the scenery most familiar to me’ with the 
strange world for which I had to draw so much on imagi- 
nation.’ * Through all the closing scenes of the second he is 


1L. vi. p. 188. Compare the description of Fairy Dean, vii. 192. 

* All, alas! were now in a great measure so written. Ivanhoe, The 
Monastery, The Abbot and Kenilworth were all published between De- 
cember 1819 and January 1821, Constable & Co. giving five thousand 
guineas for the remaining copyright of them, Scott clearing ten thou- 
sand before the bargain was completed ; and before the Fortunes of 
Nigel issued from the press Scott had exchanged instruments and re- 
ceived his bookseller’s bills for no less than four ‘works of fiction,’ not 
one of them otherwise described in the deeds of agreement, to be pro- 
duced in unbroken succession, each of them to fill up at least three volumes, 
but with proper saving clauses as to increase of copy money tn case any of 
them should run to four ; and within two years all this anticipation had 
been wiped off by Peverid of the Peak, Quentin Durward, St. Ronan’s 
Well, and Redgauntlet. 


FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 175 


raised to his own true level by his love for the queen. And 
within the code of Scott’s work to which I am about to appeal 
for illustration of his essential powers, I accept the Monastery 
and Abbot, and reject from it the remaining four of this group. 

The last series contains two quite noble ones, Redgauntlet 
and Nigel ; two of very high value, Durward and Woodstock ; 
the slovenly and diffuse Peveril, written for the trade; the 
sickly Zales of the Crusaders, and the entirely broken and dis- 
eased St. Ronan’s Well. This last I throw out of count. alto- 
yether, and of the rest, accept only the four first named as 
sound work ; so that the list of the novels in which I propose 
to examine his methods and ideal standards, reduces itself to 
these following twelve (named in order of production) : 
Waverley, Guy Mannering, the Antiquary, Rob Roy, Old Mor- 
tality, the Heart of Midlothian, the Monastery, the Abbot, the 
Fortunes of Nigel, Quentin Durward, and Woodstock.’ 

It is, however, too late to enter on my subject in this arti- 
cle, which I may fitly close by pointing out some of the merely 
verbal characteristics of his style, illustrative in little ways of 
the questions we have been examining, and chiefly of the one 
which may be most embarrassing to many readers, the differ- 
ence, namely, between character and disease. 

One quite distinctive charm in the Waverleys is their modi- 
fied use of the Scottish dialect ; but it has not generally been 
observed, either by their imitators, or the authors of different 
taste who have written for a later public, that there is a differ- 
ence between the dialect of a language, and its corruption. 

A dialect is formed in any district where there are persons 
of intelligence enough to use the language itself in all its fine- 
ness and force, but under the particular conditions of life, 
climate, and temper, which introduce words peculiar to the 
scenery, forms of word and idioms of sentence peculiar to the 
race, and pronunciations indicative of their character and dis- 
position. 


! Woodstock was finished 26th March 1826. He knew then of his 
ruin ; and wrote in bitterness, but not in weakness. The closing pages 
are the most beautiful of the book. But amonth afterwards Lady Scott 
died ; and he never wrote glad word more. 


176 FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 


Thus ‘burn’ (of a streamlet) is a word possible only in a 

country where there are brightly running waters, ‘lassie,’ a 
word possible only where girls are as free as the rivulets, and 
‘auld,’ a form of the southern ‘old,’ adopted by a race of 
finer musical ear than the English. 

On the contrary, mere deteriorations, or coarse, stridulent, 
and, in the ordinary sense of the phrase, ‘broad’ forms of 
utterance, are not dialects at all, having nothing dialectic in 
them, and all phrases developed in states of rude employment, 
and restricted intercourse, are injurious to the tone and nar- 
rowing to the power of the language they affect. Mere 
breadth of accent does not spoil a dialect as long as the speak- 
ers are men of yaried idea and good intelligence ; but the mo- 
ment the life is contracted by mining, millwork, or any op- 
pressive and monotonous labour, the accents and phrases be- 
come debased. It is part of the popular folly of the day to 
find pleasure in trying to write and spell these abortive, crip- 
pled, and more or less brutal forms of human speech. 

Abortive, crippled, or brutal, are however not necessarily 
‘corrupted’ dialects. Corrupt language is that gathered by 
ignorance, invented by vice, misused by insensibility, or 
minced and mouthed by affectation, especially in the attempt 
to deal with words of which only half the meaning is under- 
stood, or half the sound heard. Mrs. Gamp’s ‘ aperiently so’ 
—and the ‘undermined’ with primal sense of undermine, of 
—I forget which gossip, in the Mill on the Floss, are master- 
and mistress pieces in this latter kind. Mrs. Malaprop’s ‘al- 
legories on the banks of the Nile’ are in a somewhat higher 
order of mistake : Miss Tabitha Bramble’s ignorance is vul- 
garised by her selfishness, and Winifred Jenkins’ by her con- 
ceit. The ‘wot’ of Noah Claypole, and the other degradations 
of cockneyism (Sam Weller and his father are in nothing more 
admirable than in the power of heart and sense that can 
purify even these); the ‘trewth’ of Mr. Chadband, and 
‘natur’ of Mr. Squeers, are examples of the corruption of 
words by insensibility : the use of the word ‘bloody’ in mod- 
ern low English is a deeper corruption, not altering the form 
of the word, but defiling the thought in it. 


FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 1i7 


Thus much being understood, I shall proceed to examine 
thoroughly a fragment of Scott's Lowland Scottish dialect ; 
not choosing it of the most beautiful kind ; on the contrary, 
it shall be a piece reaching as low down as he ever allows 
Scotch to go—it is perhaps the only unfair patriotism in him, 
that if ever he wants a word or two of really villanous slang, 
he gives it in English or Dutch—not Scotch. 

I had intended in the close of this paper to analyse and com- 
pare the characters of Andrew Fairservice and Richie Moni- 
plies for examples, the former of innate evil, unaffected by ex- 
ternal influences, and undiseased, but distinct from natural 
goodness as a nettle is distinct from balm or lavender ; and 
the latter of innate goodness, contracted and pinched by cir- 
cumstance, but still undiseased, as an oak-leaf crisped by frost, 
not by the worm. This, with much else in my mind, I must 
put off; but the careful study of one sentence of Andrew’s 
will give us a good deal to think of. 

I take his account of the rescue of Glasgow Cathedral at the 
time of the Reformation. ; 





Ah! it’s a brave kirk—nane o’ yere whigmaleeries and 
curliewurlies and opensteek hems about it—a’ solid, weel- 
jointed mason-wark, that will stand as lang as the warld, keep 
hands and gunpowther affit. It hadamaist a douncome lang 
syne at the Reformation, when they pu’d doun the kirks of 
St. Andrews and Perth, and thereawa’, to cleanse them o’ Pap- 
ery, and idolatry, and image-worship, and surplices, and sic- 
like rags o’ the muckle hure that sitteth on seven hills, as if 
ane wasna braid eneugh for her auld hinder end. Sae the 
commons 0’ Renfrew, and o’ the Barony, and the Gorbals, and 
a’ about, they behoved to come into Glasgow ae fair morning, 
to try their hand on purging the High Kirk o’ Popish nick- 
nackets. But the townsmen o’ Glasgow, they were feared 
their auld edifice might slip the girths in gaun through siccan 
rough physic, sae they rang the common bell, and assembled 
the train-bands wi took o’ drum. By good luck, the worthy 
‘James Rabat was Dean o’ Guild that year—(and a gude ma- 
‘son he was himsell, made him the keener to keep up the auld 
bigging), and the trades assembled, and offered downright 
battle to the commons, rather than their kirk should coup the 
crans, as others had done elsewhere. It wasna for luve o’ 


178 FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 





Paperie—na, na!—nane could ever say that o’ the trades o’ 
Glasgow—Sae they sune came to an agreement to take a’ the 
idolatrous statues of sants (sorrow be on them !) out o’ their 
neuks—And sae the bits o’ stane idols were broken in pieces 
by Scripture warrant, and flung into the Molendinar burn, and 
the auld kirk stood as crouse as a cat when the flaes are kaimed 
aff her, and a’body was alike pleased. And I hae heard wise 
folk say, that if the same had been done in ilka kirk in Scot- 
land, the Reform wad just hae been as pure as it is e’en now, 
and we wad hae mair Christian-like kirks ; for I hae been sae 
lang in England, that naething will drived out o’ my head, 
that the dog-kennel at Osbaldistone-Hall is better than mony 
a house o’ God in Scotland. 


Now this sentence is in the first place a piece of Scottish 
history of quite inestimable and concentrated value. Andrew’s 
temperament is the type of a vast class of Scottish—shall we 
call it ‘ sow-thistlian ’—mind, which necessarily takes the view 
of either Pope or saint that the thistle in Lebanon took of the 
cedar or lilies in Lebanon ; and the entire force of the pas- 
sions which, in the Scottish revolution, foretold and forearmed 
the French one, is told in this one paragraph ; the coarseness 
of it, observe, being admitted, not for the sake of the laugh, 
any more than an onion in broth merely for its flavour, but 
for the meat of it; the inherent constancy of that coarseness 
being a fact in this order of mind, and an essential part of the 
history to be told. 

Secondly, observe that this speech, in the religious passion 
of it, such as there may be, is entirely sincere. Andrew is a 
thief, a liar, a coward, and, in the Fair service from which he 
takes his name, a hypocrite; but in the form of prejudice, 
which is all that his mind is capable of in the place of religion, 
he isentirely sincere. He does not in the least pretend detes- 
tation of image worship to please his master, or any one else ; 
he honestly scorns the ‘ carnal morality ’ as dowd and fusion- 
less as rue-leaves at Yule’ of the sermon in the upper cathe- 
dral ; and when wrapt in critical attention to the ‘ real savour 
o’ doctrine’ in the crypt, so completely forgets the hypocrisy of 


' Compare Mr. Spurgeon’s not unfrequent orations on the same sub- 
ject. 


FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL, 179 


his fair service as to return his master’s attempt to disturb 
him with hard punches of the elbow. 

Thirdly, He is aman of no mean sagacity, quite up to the 
average standard of Scottish common sense, not a low one ; 
and, though incapable of understanding any manner of lofty 
thought or passion, is a shrewd measurer of weaknesses, and 
not without a spark or two of kindly feeling. See first his 
sketch of his master’s character to Mr. Hammorgaw, begin- 
ning: ‘He’s no a'thegither sae void o’ sense, neither ;’ and 
then the close of the dialogue: ‘But the lad’s no a bad lad 
after a’, and he needs some carefu’ body to look after him.’ 

Fourthly. He is a good workman ; knows his own business 
well, and can judge of other craft, if sound, or otherwise. 

All these four qualities of him must be known before we 
can understand this single speech. Keeping them in mind, 
I take it up, word by word. 

You observe, in the outset, Scott makes no attempt what- 
eyer to indicate accents or modes of pronunciation by changed 
spelling, unless the word becomes a quite definitely new and 
scarcely writeable one. The Scottish way of pronouncing 
‘James,’ for instance, is entirely peculiar, and extremely pleas- 
ant to the ear. But it is so, just because it does not change 
the word into Jeems, nor into Jims, nor into Jawms. A mod- 
ern writer of dialects would think it amusing to use one or 
other of these ugly spellings. But Scott writes the name in 
pure English, knowing that a Scots reader will speak it right- 
ly, and an English one be wise in letting it alone. On the 
other hand he writes ‘ weel’ for ‘ well,’ because that word is 
complete in its change, and may be very closely expressed by 
the double e. The ambiguous ‘wu’s in ‘ gude’ and ‘sune’ are 
admitted, because far liker the sound than the double o would 
be, and that in ‘ hure,’ for grace’ sake, to soften the word ;— 
so also ‘ flaes’ for ‘ fleas.’ ‘Mony’ for ‘many’ is again posi- 
tively right in sound, and ‘neuk’ differs from our ‘nook’ in 
sense, and is not the same word at all, as we shall presently see. 

Secondly, observe, not a word is corrupted in any indecent 
haste, slowness, slovenliness, or incapacity of pronunciation. 
There is no lisping, drawling, slobbering, or snuffling : the 


180 FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL, 


speech is as clear as a bell and as keen as an arrow: and its 
elisions and contractions are either melodious, (‘ na,’ for ‘not,’ 
—‘pu’d,’ for ‘pulled,’) or as normal as in a Latin verse. The 
long words are delivered without the slightest bungling ; and 
‘bigging’ finished to its last g. 

I take the important words now in their places. 

Brave. The old English sense of the word in ‘to go brave’ 
retained, expressing Andrew’s sincere and respectful admira- 
tion. Had he meant to insinuate a hint of the church’s being 
too fine, he would have said ‘ braw.’ 

Kirk. This is of course just as pure and unprovincial a. 
word as ‘ Kirche,’ or ‘ église.’ 

Whigmaleeric. I cannot get at the root of this word, but it 
is one showing that the speaker is not bound by classic rules, 
but will use any syllables that enrich his meaning. ‘ Nip- 
perty-tipperty’ (of his master’s ‘ poetry-nonsense ’) is another 
word of the same class. ‘Curlieurlie’is of course just as pure 
as Shakespeare’s ‘Hurly-burly.’ But see first suggestion of 
the idea to Scott at Blair-Adam (L. vi. 264). 

Opensteek hems. More description, or better, of the later 
Gothic cannot be put into four syllables. ‘ Steek,’ melodious 
for stitch, has a combined sense of closing or fastening. And 
note that the later Gothic, being precisely what Scott knew 
best (in Melrose) and liked best, it is, here as elsewhere, quite 
as much himself ' as Frank, that he is laughing at, when he 
laughs with Andrew, whose ‘ opensteek hems’ are only a ruder 
metaphor for his own ‘ willow-wreaths changed to stone.’ 

Gunpowther. ‘-Ther’ is a lingering vestige of the French 
‘-dre.’ 

Syne. One of the melodious and mysterious Scottish words 
which have partly the sound of wind and stream in them, and 
partly the range of softened idea which is like a distance of 
blue hills over border land (‘far in the distant Cheviot’s blue’). 
Perhaps even the least sympathetic ‘ Eneglisher’ might recog- 
nise this, if he heard ‘Old Long Since’ vocally substituted 

' There are three definite and intentional portraits of himself, in the 


novels, each giving a separate part of himself: Mr. Oldbuck, Frank Os- 
baldistone, and Alan Fairford. 


FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 181 


for the Scottish words to the air. I do not know the root; 
but the word’s proper meaning is not ‘since,’ but before or 
after an interval of some duration, ‘as weel sune as syne.’ 
‘But first on Sawnie gies a ca’, Syne, bauldly in she enters.’ 

Behoved (to come). A rich word, with peculiar idiom, al- 
ways used more or less ironically of anything done under a 
partly mistaken and partly pretended notion of duty. 

Siccan. Far prettier, and fuller in meaning than ‘such.’ 
It contains an added sense of wonder; and means ai ed 

‘so great’ or ‘so unusual.’ 

Took (0 drum). Classical ‘tuck’ from Italian ‘toecata,’ the 
preluding ‘touch’ or flourish, on any instrument (but see 
Johnson under word ‘tucket,’ quoting Othello). The deeper 
Scottish vowels are used here to mark the deeper sound of 
the bass drum, as in more solemn warning. 

Biaging. The only word in all the sentence of which the 
Scottish form is less melodious than the English, ‘and what 
for no,’ seeing that Scottish architecture is mostly little be- 
yond Bessie Bell’s and Mary Gray’s? ‘They biggit a bow’re 
by yon burnside, and theekit it owre wi rashes.’ But it is 
pure Anglo-Saxon in roots; see glossary to Fairbairn’s edition 
of the Douglas Virgil, 1710. 

Coup. Another of the much-embracing words; short for 
‘upset,’ but with a sense of awkwardness as the inherent 
cause of fall; compare Richie Moniplies (also for sense of 
‘behoved’): ‘Ae auld hirplin deevil of a potter behoved just 
to step in my way, and offer me a pig (earthern pot—etym. 
dub.), as he said “just to put my Scotch ointment in ;” and I 
gave him a push, as but natural, and the tottering deevil 
coupit owre amang his own pigs, and damaged a score of 
them.’ So also Dandie Dinmont in the postchaise: ‘’Od! I 
hope they'll no coup us.’ 

The Crans. Idiomatic; root unknown to me, but it means 
in this use, full, total, and without recovery. 

Molendinar. From ‘molendinum,’ the grinding-place. Ido 
not know if actually the local name,’ or Scott’s invention. 


' Andrew knows Latin, and might have coined the word in his con- 
eeit; but, writing to a kind friend in Glasgow, I find the brook was 


182 FICTION—FAIR AND FOUT. 


Compare Sir Piercie’s ‘Molinaras.’ But at all events used 
here with bye-sense of degradation of the formerly idle saints 
to grind at the mill. 

Crouse. Courageous, softened with a sense of comfort. 

Tika. Again a word with azure distance, including the 
whole sense of ‘ each’ and ‘every.’ The reader must carefully 
and reverently distinguish these comprehensive words, which 
eather two or more perfectly understood meanings into one 
chord of meaning, and are harmonies more than words, from 
the above-noted blunders between two half-hit meanings, 
struck as a bad piano-player strikes the edge of another note. 
In English we have fewer of these combined thoughts; so 
that Shakespeare rather plays with the distinct lights of his 
words, than melts them into one. So again Bishop Douglas 
spells, and doubtless spoke, the word ‘rose,’ differently, ac- 
cording to his purpose ; if as the chief or governing ruler of 
flowers, ‘rois,’ but if only in her own beauty, rose. 

Christian-like. The sense of the decency and order proper 
to Christianity is stronger in Scotland than in any other coun- 
try, and the word ‘Christian’ more distinctly opposed to 
‘beast.’ Hence the back-handed cut at the English for their 
over-pious care of dogs. 

Iam a little surprised myself at the length to which this 
examination of one small piece of Sir Walter’s first-rate work 
has carried us, but here I must end for this time, trusting, if 
the Editor of the Nineteenth Century permit me, yet to tres- 
pass, perhaps more than once, on his readers’ patience; but, 
at all events, to examine in a following paper the technical 
characteristics of Scott’s own style, both in prose and verse, 


called ‘Molyndona’ even before the building of the Sub-dean Mill in 
1446. See also account of the locality in Mr. George’s admirable vol- 
ume, Old Glasgow, pp. 129, 149, &c. The Protestantism of Glasgow, 
since throwing that powder of saints into her brook Kidron, has pre- 
sented it with other pious offerings; and my friend goes on to say that 
the brook, once famed for the purity of its waters (much used for bleach- 
ing’, ‘has for nearly a hundred years been a crawling stream of loath- 
someness. It is now bricked over, and a carriage-way made on the top 
of it; underneath the foul mess still passes through the heart of the 
city, till it falls into the Clyde close to the harbour.’ 


FICTION—FAIR AND TOUT. 183 


together with Byron’s, as opposed to our fashionably recent 
dialects and rhythms; the essential virtues of language, in 
both the masters of the old school, hinging ultimately, little 
as it might be thought, on certain unalterable views of theirs 
concerning the code called ‘of the Ten Commandments,’ 
wholly at variance with the dogmas of automatic morality 
which, summed again by the witches’ line, ‘ Fair is foul, and 
foul is fair,’ hover through the fog and filthy air of our pros- 
perous England. 
Joun Rusk. 


‘ He hated greetings in the market-place, and there were gener- 
ally loiterers in the streets to persecute him either about the 
events of the day, or about some petty pieces of business.’ 

These lines, which the reader will find near the beginning 
of the sixteenth chapter of the first volume of the Antiquary, 
contain two indications of the old man’s character, which, re- 
ceiving the ideal of him as a portrait of Scott himself, are of 
extreme interest tome. They mean essentially that neither 
Monkbarns nor Scott had any mind to be called of men, 
Rabbi, in mere hearing of the mob ; and especially that they 
hated to be drawn back out of their far-away thoughts, or 
forward out of their long-ago thoughts, by any manner of 
‘daily’ news, whether printed or gabbled. Of which two 
vital characteristics, deeper in both the men, (for I must 
always speak of Scott’s creations as if they were as real as 
himself,) than any of their superficial vanities, or passing en- 
thusiasms, I have to speak more at another time. I quote the 
passage just now, because there was one piece of the daily 
news of the year 1815 which did extremely interest Scott, and 
materially direct the labour of the latter part of his life ; nor 
is there any piece of history in this whole nineteenth century 
quite so pregnant with various instruction as the study of the 
reasons which influenced Scott and Byron in their opposite 
views of the glories of the battle of Waterloo. 

But I quote it for another reason also. The principal 
greeting which Mr. Oldbuck on this occasion receives in the 
market-place, being compared with the speech of Andrew 


184 FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 


Fairservice, examined in my first paper, will furnish me with 
the text of what I have mainly to say in the present one. 

‘« Mr, Oldbuck,” said the town-clerk (a more important 
person, who came in front and ventured to stop the old gentle- 
man), ‘the provost, understanding you were in town, begs on 
no account that you'll quit it without seeing him; he wants 
to speak to ye about bringing the water frae the Fairwell 
spring through a part o’ your lands.” 

‘« What the deuce !—have they nobody’s land but mine to 
cut and carve on ?—I won’t consent, tell them.” 

‘« And the provost,” said the clerk, going on, without 
noticing the rebuff, ‘and the council, wad be agreeable that 
you should hae the auld stanes at Donagild’s Chapel, that ye 
was wussing to hae.” 

‘« Th ?>-what ?—Oho! that’s another story—Well, well, 
[ll call upon the provost, and we'll talk about it.” 

‘« But ye maun speak your mind on’t forthwith, Monk- 
barns, if ye want the stanes; for Deacon Harlewalls thinks 
the carved through-stanes might be put with advantage on 
the front of the new council-house—that is, the twa cross- 
legged figures that the callants used to ca’ Robbin and Bob- 
bin, ane on ilka door-cheek ; and the other stane, that they 
ca’d Ailie Dailie, abune the door. It will be very tastefu’, the 
Deacon says, and just in the style of modern Gothic.” 

‘**Good Lord deliver me from this Gothic generation !” 
exclaimed the Antiquary,—‘‘a monument of a knight-templar 
on each side of a Grecian porch, and a Madonna on the top 
of it !—O crimini /—Well, tell the provost I wish to have the 
stones, and we'll not differ about the water-course.—It’s lucky 
I happened to come this way to-day.” 

‘They parted mutually satisfied; but the wily clerk had 
most reason to exult in the dexterity he had displayed, since 
the whole proposal of an exchange between the monuments 
(which the council had determined to remove as a nuisance, 
because they encroached three feet upon the public road) and 
the privilege of conveying the water to the burgh, through 
the estate of Monkbarns, was an idea which had originated 
-with himself upon the pressure of the moment.’ . 


FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 185 


In this single page of Scott, will the reader please note the 
kind of prophetic instinct with which the great men of every 
age mark and forecast its destinies? The water from the 
Fairwell is the future Thirlmere carried to Manchester ; the 
‘auld stanes’’ at Donagild’s Chapel, removed as a nuisance, 


The following fragments out of the letters in my own possession, 
written by Scott to the builder of Abbotsford, as the outer decorations 
of the house were in process of completion, will show how accurately 
Scott had pictured himself in Monkbarns. 


‘Abbotsford: April 21, 1817. 


‘Dear Sir,—Nothing can be more obliging than your attention to the 
old stones. You have been as true as the sundial itself.’ [The sundial 
had just been erected.| ‘Of the two I would prefer the larger one, as 
it is to be in front of a parapet quite in the old taste. But in case of 
accidents it will be safest in your custody till I come to town again on 
the 12th of May. Your former favours (which were weighty as accept- 
able) have come safely out here, and will be disposed of with great 
effect.’ 

‘ Abbotsford: July 30. 


‘I fancy the Tolbooth still keeps its feet, but, as it must soon descend, 
I hope you will remember me. I have an important use for the niche 
above the door; and though many a man has got a niche én the Tol- 
booth by building, I believe I am the first that ever got a niche out of 
it on such an occasion. For which I have to thank your kindness, and 
to remain very much your obliged humble servant, 
‘WALTER SCOT.’ 


‘ August 16. 


‘My dear Sir,—I trouble you with this [sc] few lines to thank you 
for the very accurate drawings and measurements of the Tolbooth door, 
and for your kind promise to attend to my interest and that of Abbots- 
ford in the matter of the Thistle and Fleur de Lis. Most of our scutch- 
eons are now mounted, and look very well, as the house is something 
after the model of an old hall (not a castle), where such things are well 
in character.’ [Alas—Sir Walter, Sir Walter!] ‘I intend the old lion 
to predominate over a well which the children have christened the 
Fountain of the Lions. His present den, however, continues to be the 
hall at Castle Street.’ 

‘September 5. 

‘Dear Sir,—I am greatly obliged to you for securing the stone. I am 
not sure that I will put up the gate quite in the oid form, but I wouid 
like to secure the means of doing so, The ornamental stones are now 


186 FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 


foretell the necessary view taken by modern cockneyism, 
Liberalism, and progress, of all things that remind them of 
the noble dead, of their father’s fame, or of their own duty ; 
and the public road becomes their idol, instead of the saint’s 
shrine. Finally, the roguery of the entire transaction—the 
mean man seeing the weakness of the honourable, and ‘best- 
ing’ him—in modern slang, in the manner and at the pace of 
modern trade—‘ on the pressure of the moment.’ 

But neither are these things what I have at present quoted 
the passage for. 

I quote it, that we may consider how much wonderful and 
various history is gathered in the fact, recorded for us in this 
piece of entirely fair fiction, that in the Scottish borough of 
Fairport, (Montrose, really,) in the year 17— of Christ, the 
knowledge given by the pastors and teachers provided for its 
children by enlightened Scottish Protestantism, of their 
fathers’ history, and the origin of their religion, had resulted 
in this substance and sum ;—that the statues of two crusading 
knights had become, to their children, Robin and Bobbin ; 
and the statue of the Madonna, Ailie Dailie. 

A marvellous piece of history, truly: and far too compre- 
hensive for general comment here. Only one small piece of 
it I must carry forward the readers’ thoughts upon. 

The pastors and teachers aforesaid, (represented typically in 
another part of this errorless book by Mr. Blattergowl) are 


put up, and have a very happy effect. If you will have the kindness 
to let me know when the Tolbooth door comes down, I will send in my 
carts for the stones; I have an admirable situation forit. I suppose the 
door itself’ [he means, the wooden one] ‘ will be kept for the new jail; 
if not, and not otherwise wanted, I would esteem it curious to possess 
it. Certainly I hope so many sore hearts will not pass through the 
celebrated door when in my possession as heretofore.’ 


‘September 8. 
‘I should esteem it very fortunate if I could have the door also, 
though I suppose it is modern, having been burned down at the time of 
Porteous-mob. 
‘If am very much obliged to the gentlemen who thought these re- 
mains of the Heart of Midlothian are not ill bestowed on their intended 
possessor.’ 


FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 187 


not, whatever else they may have to answer for, answerable 
for these names. The names are of the children’s own choos- 
ing and bestowing, but not of the children’s own inventing. 
‘Robin ’ is a classically endearing cognomen, recording the 
errant heroism of old days—the name of the Bruce and of 
Rob Roy. ‘Bobbin’ is a poetical and symmetrical fulfilment 
and adornment of the original phrase. ‘Ailie’ is the last 
echo of ‘Ave,’ changed into the softest Scottish Christian 
name familiar to the children, itself the beautiful feminine 
form of royal ‘Louis;’ the ‘Dailie’ again symmetrically 
added for kinder and more musical endearment. The last 
vestiges, you see, of honour for the heroism and religion of 
their ancestors, lingering on the lips of babes and sucklings. 

But what is the meaning of this necessity the children find 
themselves under of completing the nomenclature rhythmi- 
cally and rhymingly? Note first the difference carefully, and 
the attainment of both qualities by the couplets in question. 
Rhythm is the syllabic and quantitative measure of the words, 
in which Robin, both in weight and time, balances Bobbin ; 
and Dailie holds level scale with Ailie. But rhyme is the 
added correspondence of sound; unknown and undesired, so 
far as we can learn, by the Greek Orpheus, but absolutely 
essential to, and, as special virtue, becoming titular of, the 
Scottish Thomas. 

The ‘Ryme,’’ you may at first fancy, is the especially 
childish part of the work. Not so. It is the especially chiy- 
alric and Christian part of it. It characterises the Christian 
chant or canticle, as a higher thing than a Greek ode, melos, 
or hymnos, or than a Latin carmen. 

Think of it, for this again is wonderful! That these chil- 
dren of Montrose should have an element of music in their 
souls which Homer had not,—which a melos of David the 
Prophet and King had not,—which Orpheus and Amphion 
had not,—which Apollo’s unrymed oracles became mute at 
the sound of. 

1Henceforward, not in affectation, but for the reader’s better con- 


venience, I shall continue to spell ‘Ryme’ without our wrongly 
added h. 


188 FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 


A strange new equity this,—melodious justice and judg- 
ment as it were,—in all words spoken solemnly and ritualist- 
ically by Christian human creatures ;—Robin and Bobbin— 
by the Crusader’s tomb, up to ‘ Dies ire, dies illa,’ at judg- 
ment of the crusading soul. 

You have to understand this most deeply of all Christian 
minstrels, from first to last; that they are more musical, be- 
cause more joyful, than any others on earth: ethereal min- 
strels, pilgrims of the sky, true to the kindred points of 
heaven and home; their joy essentially the sky-lark’s, in 
light, in purity ; but, with their human eyes, looking for the 
glorious appearing of something in the sky, which the bird 
cannot. 

This itis that changes Etruscan murmur into Terza rima— 
Horatian Latin into Provengal troubadour’s melody ; not, be- 
cause less artful, less wise. 

Here is a little bit, for instance, of French ryming just 
before Chaucer’s time—near enough to our own French to be 
intelligible to us yet. 


‘O quant trés-glorieuse vie, 

Quant cil quit out peut et maistrie, 
Veult esprouver pour neécessaire, 
Ne pour quant il ne blasma mie 

La vie de Marthe sa mie: 

Mais il lui donna exemplaire 
D’autrement vivre, et de bien plaire 
A Dieu ; et plut de bien 4 faire: 
Pour se conclut-il que Marie 

Qui estoit a ses piedz sans braire, 
Et pensait d’entendre et de taire, 
Estleut la plus saine partie. 


La meilleur partie esleut-elle 

Et la plus saine et la plus belle, 

Qui ja ne luy sera ostée 

Car par vérité se fut celle 

Qui fut tousjours fresche et nouvelle, 
D’aymer Dieu et d’en estre aymée; 
Car jusqu’au cueur fut entamée, 

Et si ardamment enflamée, 


FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 189 


Que tous-jours ardoit l’estincelle ; 
Par quoi elle fut visitée 

Et de Dieu premier comfortée ; 
Car charité est trop ysnelle.’ 


The only law of metre, observed in this song, is that each 
line shall be octosyllabic : 


Qui fut | tousjours | fresche et | nouvelle, 
D’autre | ment vi | vret de | bien (ben) plaire. 
Et pen | soit den | tendret | de taire 


But the reader must note that words which were two-syllabled 
in Latin mostly remain yet so in the French. 


La vi | e de | Marthe | sa mie, 


although mize, which is pet language, loving abbreviation of 
amica through amie, remains monosyllabic. But vie elides its 
e before a vowel: 


Car Mar- | the me | nait-vie | active 
Et Ma- | ri-e | contemp | lative ; 


and custom endures many exceptions. Thus Marie may be 
three-syllabled as above, or answer to mie as a dissyllable ; 
but vierge is always, I think, dissyllabic, vier-ge, with even 
stronger accent on the -ge, for the Latin -go. 

Then, secondly, of quantity, there is scarcely any fixed law. 
The metres may be timed as the minstrel chooses—fast or 
slow—and the iambic current checked in reverted eddy, as 
the words chance to come. 

But, thirdly, there is to be rich ryming and chiming, no 
matter how simply got, so only that the words jingle and 
tingle together with due art of interlacing and answering in 
different parts of the stanza, correspondent to the involutions 
of tracery and illumination. The whole twelve-line stanza 
is thus constructed with two rymes only, six of each, thus 


arranged : 
AAB| AAB|BBA|BBA| 


dividing the verse thus into four measures, reversed in ascent 
and descent, or descant more properly ; and doubtless with 


190 FICTION—LPAIN AND FOUL. 


correspondent phases in the voice-given, and duly accompany- 
ing, or following, music; Thomas the Rymer’s own precept, 
that ‘tong is chefe in mynstrelsye,’ being always kept faithfully 
in mind. * 

Here then you have a sufficient example of the pure chant 
of the Christian ages; which is always at heart joyful, and 
divides itself into the four great forms, Song of Praise, Song 
of Prayer, Song of Love, and Song of Battle ; praise, however, 
being the keynote of passion through all the four forms ; ac- 
cording to the first law which I have already given in the laws 
of Fesolé ; ‘all great Art is Praise,’ of which the contrary is 
_also true, all foul or miscreant Art is accusation, dvaBoAy% : 
‘She gave me of the tree and I did eat’ being an entirely 
museless expression on Adam’s part, the briefly essential con- 
trary of Love-sone. 

With these four perfect forms of Christian chant, of which 
we may take for pure examples the ‘'T'e Deum,’ the ‘ Te Lucis 
Ante,’ the ‘ Amor che nella mente,’ * and the ‘ Chant de Roland,’ 
are mingled songs of mourning, of Pagan origin (whether 
Greek or Danish), holding grasp still of the races that have 
once learned them, in times of suffering and sorrow; and 
songs of Christian humiliation or grief, regarding chiefly the 
sufferings of Christ, or the conditions of our own sin: while 
through the entire system of these musical complaints are 
interwoven moralities, instructions, and related histories, in 
illustration of both, passing into Epic and Romantic verse, 
which gradually, as the forms and learnings of society increase, 
becomes less joyful, and more didactic, or satiric, until the 


eb Fick Wey oS 

* “Che nella mente mia rwgiona.’ Love—you observe, the highest 
Reasonableness, instead of French zrresse, or even Shakespearian ‘ mere 
folly’ ; and Beatrice as the Goddess of Wisdom in this third song of the 
Convito, to be compared with the Revolutionary Goddess of Reason ; 
remembering of the whole poem chiefly the line :— 


‘ Costei penso chi che mosso l’universo.’ 


(See Lyell’s Canzoniere, p. 104.) 


FPICTION—FAIR AND FOUL, 191 


last echoes of Christian joy and melody vanish in the ‘ Vanity 
of human wishes.’ 

And here I must pause for a minute or two to separate the 
different branches of our inquiry clearly from one another. 
For one thing, the reader must please put for the present out 
of his head all thought of the progress of ‘ civilisation ’“—that 
is to say, broadly, of the substitution of wigs for hair, gas for 
candles, and steam for legs. This is an entirely distinct mat- 
ter from the phases of policy and religion. It has nothing to 
do with the British Constitution, or the French Revolution, 
or the unification of Italy. There are, indeed, certain subtle 
relations between the state of mind, for instance, in Venice, 
_ which makes her prefer a steamer to a gondola, and that 
which makes her prefer a gazetteer to a duke; but these re- 
lations are not at all to be dealt with until we solemnly under- 
stand that whether men shall be Christians: and poets, or 
infidels and dunces, does not depend on the way they cut 
their hair, tie their breeches, or light their fires. Dr. John- 
son might have worn his wig in fulness conforming to his 
dignity, without therefore coming to the conclusion that 
human wishes were vain ; nor is Queen Antoinette’s civilised 
hair-powder, as opposed to Queen Bertha’s savagely loose 
hair, the cause of Antoinette’s laying her head at last in scaf- 
fold dust, but Bertha in a pilgrim-haunted tomb. 

Again, I have just now used the words ‘poet’ and ‘dunce,’ 
meaning the degree of each quality possible to average human 
nature. Men are eternally divided into the two classes of poet 
(believer, maker, and praiser) and dunce (or unbeliever, un- 
maker, and dispraiser). And in process of ages they have the 
power of making faithful and formative creatures of them- 
selves, or unfaithful and deformative. And this distinction 
between the creatures who, blessing, are blessed, and evermore 
benedicti, and the creatures who, cursing, are cursed, and ever- 
more maledicti, is one going through all humanity; antediluvian 
in Cain and Abel, diluvian in Ham and Shem. And the ques- 
tion for the public of any given period is not whether they are 
a constitutional or unconstitutional vulgus, but whether they 
are a benignant or malignant vuleus. So also, whether it i/ 


192 FICTION—FALR AND FOUL. 


indeed the gods who have given any gentleman the grace to 
despise the rabble, depends wholly on whether it is indeed the 
rabble, or he, who are the malignant persons. 

But yet again. This difference between the persons to 
whom Heaven, according to Orpheus, has granted ‘the hour 
of delight,’ * and those whom it has condemned to the hour 
of detestableness, being, as I have just said, of all times and 
nations,—it is an interior and more delicate difference which 
we are examining in the gift of Christian, as distinguished from 
unchristian, song. Orpheus, Pindar, and Horace are indeed 
distinct from the prosaic rabble, as the bird from the snake; 
but between Orpheus and Palestrina, Horace and Sidney, 
there is another division, and a new power of music and song 
given to the humanity which has hope of the Resurrection. 

This is the root of all life and all rightness in Christian 
harmony, whether of word or instrument; and so literally, 
that in precise manner as this hope disappears, the power of 
song is taken away, and taken away utterly. When the Chris- 
tian falls back out of the bright hope of the Resurrection, even 
the Orpheus song is forbidden him. Not to have known the 
hope is blameless: one may sing, unknowing, as the swan, or 
Philomela. But to have known and fall away from it, and to 
declare that the human wishes, which are summed in that one 
—‘Thy kingdom come ’—are vain! The Fates ordain there 
shall be no singing after that denial. 

For observe this, and earnestly. The old Orphic song, with 
its dim hope of yet once more Kurydice,—the Philomela song 
—eranted after the cruel silence,—the Haleyon song — 
with its fifteen days of peace, were all sad, or joyful only in 
some vague vision of conquest over death. But the Johnso- 
nian vanity of wishes is on the whole satisfactory to Johnson— 
accepted with gentlemanly resignation by Pope—triumphantly 
and with bray of penny trumpets and blowing of steam- 
whistles, proclaimed for the glorious discovery of the civilised 
ages, by Mrs. Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Adam Smith, and 

1 Gpav tis Tépios—Plato, Laws, ii., Steph. 669. ‘Hour’ having here 


nearly the power of ‘Fate’ with added sense of being a daughter of 
Themis. 


FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 193 


Co. There is no God, but have we not invented gunpowder ? 
—who wants a God, with that in his pocket?’ There is no 
Resurrection, neither angel nor spirit ; but have we not paper 
and pens, and cannot every blockhead print his opinions, and 
the Day of Judgment become Republican, with everybody for 
a judge, and the flat of the universe for the throne? There 
is no law, but only gravitation and congelation, and we are 
stuck together in an everlasting hail, and melted together in 
everlasting mud, and great was the day in which our worships 
were born. And there is no Gospel, but only, whatever we’ve 
got, to get more, and, wherever we are, to go somewhere else. 
And are not these discoveries, to be sung of, and drummed 
of, and fiddled of, and generally made melodiously indubitable 
in the eighteenth century song of praise ? 

The Fates will not have it so. No word of song is possible, 
in that century, to mortal lips. Only polished versification, 
sententious pentameter and hexameter, until, having turned 
out its toes long enough without dancing, and pattered with 
its lips long enough without piping, suddenly Astrea returns 
to the earth, and a Day of Judgment of a sort, and there bursts 
out a song at last again, a most curtly melodious triplet of 
Amphisbzenic ryme. ‘(a ira.’ 

Amphisbeenic, fanged in each ryme with fire, and obeying 
Ercildoune’s precept, ‘Tong is chefe of mynstrelsye,’ to the 
syllable.—Don Giovanni's hitherto fondly chanted ‘Andiam, 
andiam,’ become suddenly impersonal and prophetic: Ir shall 
go, and you also. A cry—before it is a song, then song and 


1 Gunpowder is one of the greatest inventions of modern times, and 
what has given such a superiority to civilised nations over barbarous? ! 
(Hvenings at Home—tifth evening.) No man can owe more than I both 
to Mrs. Barbauld and Miss Edgeworth ; and I only wish that in the sub- 
stance of what they wisely said, they had been more listened to. Never- 
theless, the germs of all modern conceit and error respecting manufact- 
ure and industry, as rivals to Art and to Genius, are concentrated in 
‘Evenings at Home’ and ‘Harry and Lucy’—being all the while them- 
selves works of real genius, and prophetic of things that have yet to be 
learned and fulfilled. See for instance the paper, ‘Things by their Right 
Names,’ following the one from which I have just quoted (The Ship), 
and closing the first volume of the old edition of the Heenings. 


194 FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 


accompaniment together—perfectly done ; and the march ‘ to- 
wards the field of Mars. The two hundred and fifty thousand 
—they to the sound of stringed music—preceded by young 
girls with tricolor streamers, they have shouldered soldier- 
wise their shovels and picks, and with one throat are singing 
Ca.tra.° * 

Through all the springtime of 1790, ‘from Brittany to Bur- 
gundy, on most plains of France, under most city walls, there 
march and constitutionally wheel to the Ga-iraing mood of 
fife and drum—our clear glancing phalanxes ;—the song of 
the two hundred and fifty thousand, virgin led, is in the long 
light of July.’ Nevertheless, another song is yet needed, for 
phalanx, and for maid. For, two springs and summers haying 
gone—amphisbeenic,—on the 28th of August 1792, ‘ Dumou- 
riez rode from the camp of Maulde, eastwards to Sedan.’ * 

And Longwi has fallen basely, and Brunswick and the Prus- 
sian king will beleaguer Verdun, and Clairfait and the Aus- 
trians press deeper in over the northern marches, Cimmerian 
Europe behind. And on that same night Dumouriez as- 
sembles council of war at his lodgings in Sedan. Prussians 
here, Austrians there, triumphant both. With broad highway 
to Paris and little hindrance—we scattered, helpless here and 
there—what to advise? The generals advise retreating, and 
retreating till Paris be sacked at the latest day possible. 
Dumouriez, silent, dismisses them,—keeps only, with a sign, 
Thouvenot. Silent, thus, when needful, yet having voice, it 
appears, of what musicians call tenor-quality, of a rare kind. 
Rubini-esque, even, but scarcely producible to fastidious ears 
at opera. The seizure of the forest of Argonne follows—the 
cannonade of Valmy. The Prussians do not march on Paris 
this time, the autumnal hours of fate pass on—¢a i7a—and on 
the 6th of November, Dumouriez meets the Austrians also. 
‘Dumouriez wide-winged, they wide-winged—at and around 
Jemappes, its green heights fringed and maned with red fire. 
And Dumouriez is swept back on this wing and swept back 

1 Carlyle, French Revolution (Chapman, 1869), vol. ii. p. 70; conf. p. 


25, and the Ca tra at Arras, vol. iii. p. 276. 
® Thid. iii, 26. 


FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 195 


on that, and is like to be swept back utterly, when he rushes 
up in person, speaks a prompt word or two, and then, with 
clear tenor-pipe, uplifts the hymn of the Marseillaise, ten 
thousand tenor or bass pipes joining, or say some forty thou- 
sand in all, for every heart leaps up at the sound ; and so, with 
rhythmic march melody, they rally, they advance, they rush 
death-defying, and like the fire whirlwind sweep all manner 
of Austrians from the scene of action.’ Thus, through the 
lips of Dumouriez, sings Tyrteeus, Rouget de Lisle,’ ‘Aux 
armes—marchons!’ IJambic measure with a witness! in what 
wide strophe here beginning—in what unthought-of anti- 
strophe returning to that council chamber in Sedan ! 

While these two great songs were thus being composed, 
and sung, and danced to in cometary cycle, by the French 
nation, here in our less giddy island there rose, amidst hours 
of business in Scotland and of idleness in England, three 
troubadours of quite different temper. Different also them- 
selves, but not opponent; forming a perfect chord, and ad- 
verse all the three of them alike to the French musicians, in 
this main point—that while the (a ira and Marseillaise were 
essentially songs of blame and wrath, the British bards wrote, 
virtually, always songs of praise, though by no means psalmody 
in the ancient keys. On the contrary, all the three are alike 
moved by a singular antipathy to the priests, and are pointed 
at with fear and indignation by the pietists, of their day ;— 
not without latent cause. For they are all of them, with the 
most loving service, servants of that world which the Puritan 
and monk alike despised ; and, in the triple chord of their 
song, could not but appear to the religious persons around 
them as respectively and specifically the praisers—Scott of the 
world, Burns of the flesh, and Byron of the devil. 

To contend with this carnal orchestra, the religious world, 
having long ago rejected its Catholic Psalms as antiquated 
and unscientific, and finding its Puritan melodies sunk into 
faint jar and twangle from their native trumpet-tone, had 
nothing to oppose but the innocent, rather than religious, 


' Carlyle, French Revolution, iii. 106, the last sentence altered in a 
word or two. 


196 FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 


verses of the school recognised as that of the English Lakes ; 
very creditable to them; domestic at once and refined ; ob- 
serving the errors of the world outside of the Lakes with a 
pitying and tender indignation, and arriving in lacustrine 
seclusion at many valuable principles of philosophy, as pure 
as the tarns of their mountains, and of corresponding depth.’ 

I have lately seen, and with extreme pleasure, Mr. Matthew 
Arnold’s arrangement of Wordsworth’s poems; and read with 
sincere interest his high estimate of them. But a great poet's 
work never needs arrangement by other hands; and though 
it is very proper that Silver How should clearly understand 
and brightly praise its fraternal Rydal Mount, we must not 
forget that, over yonder, are the Andes, all the while. 

Wordsworth’s rank and scale among poets were determined 
by himself, in a single exclamation :— 


‘What was the great Parnassus’ self to thee, 
Mount Skiddaw ?’ 


Answer his question faithfully, and you have the relation 
between the great masters of the Muse’s teaching, and the 
pleasant fingerer of his pastoral flute among the reeds of 
Rydal. 

Wordsworth is simply a Westmoreland peasant, with con- 
siderably less shrewdness than most border Englishmen or 
Scotsmen inherit ; and no sense of humour: but gifted (in 
this singularly) with vivid sense of natural beauty, and a 
pretty turn for reflections, not always acute, but, as far as they 
reach, medicinal to the fever of the restless and corrupted 
life around him. Water to parched lips may be better than 
Samian wine, but do not let us therefore confuse the qualities 
of wine and water. I much doubt there being many in- 
glorious Miltons in our country churchyards; but I am very 
sure there are many Wordsworths resting there, who were in- 
ferior to the renowned one only in caring less to hear them- 
selves talk. 


1 Thave been greatly disappointed, in taking soundings of our most 
majestic mountain pools, to find them, in no case, verge on the un- 
fathomable. 


FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 197 


With an honest and kindly heart, a stimulating egoism, a 
wholesome contentment in modest circumstances, and such 
sufficient ease, in that accepted state, as permitted the passing 
of a good deal of time in wishing that daisies could see the 
beauty of their own shadows, and other such _ profitable 
mental exercises, Wordsworth has left us a series of studies 
of the graceful and happy shepherd life of our lake country, 
which to me personally, for one, are entirely sweet and pre- 
cious ; but they are only so as the mirror of an existent reality 
in many ways more beautiful than its picture. 

But the other day I went for an afternoon’s rest into the 
cottage of one of our country people of old statesman class ; 
cottage lying nearly midway between two village churches, 
but more conveniently for downhill walk towards one than 
the other. I found, as the good housewife made tea for me, 
that nevertheless she went up the hill to church. ‘Why do 
not you go to the nearer church?’ Iasked. ‘Don’t you like 
the clergyman?’ ‘Oh no, sir,’ she answered, ‘it isn’t that ; 
but you know I couldn’t leave my mother.’ ‘ Your mother! 
she is buried at H then?’ ‘Yes, sir; and you know I 
couldn’t go to church anywhere else.’ 

That feelings such as these existed among the peasants, not 
of Cumberland only, but of all the tender earth that gives 
forth her fruit for the living, and receives her dead to peace, 
might perhaps have been, to our great and endless comfort, 
discovered before now, if Wordsworth had been content to 
tell us what he knew of his own villages and people, not as 
the leader of a new and only correct school of poetry, but 
simply as a country gentleman of sense and feeling, fond of 
primroses, kind to the parish children, and reverent of the 
spade with which Wilkinson had tilled his lands: and I am 
by no means sure that his influence on the stronger minds of 
his time was anywise hastened or extended by the spirit of 
tunefulness under whose guidance he discovered that heaven 
rhymed to seven, and Foy to boy. 

Tuneful nevertheless at heart, and of the heavenly choir, I 
gladly and frankly acknowledge him ; and our English litera- 
ture enriched with a new and a singular virtue in the aeria! 





198 FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL, 


purity and healthful rightness of his quiet song ;—but aerial 
only,—not ethereal ; and lowly in its privacy of light. 

A measured mind, and calm ; innocent, unrepentant ; help- 
ful to sinless creatures and scatheless, such of the flock as do 
not stray. Hopeful at least, if not faithful ; content with in- 
timations of immortality such as may be in skipping of lambs, 
and laughter of children,—incurious to see in the hands the 
print of the Nails. 

A gracious and constant mind ; as the herbage of its native 
hills, fragrant and pure ;—yet, to the sweep and the shadow, 
the stress and distress, of the greater souls of men, as the 
tufted thyme to the laurel wilderness of Tempe,—as the 
gleaming euphrasy to the dark branches of Dodona. 


[I am obliged to defer the main body of this paper to next 
month,—revises penetrating all too late into my lacustrine 
seclusion ; as chanced also unluckily with the preceding paper, 
in which the reader will perhaps kindly correct the consequent 
misprints, p. 29, 1. 20, of ‘scarcely.’ to ‘securely,’ and p. 31, 
1. 34, ‘ full, with comma, to ‘fall,’ without one; noticing be- 
sides that Redgauntlet has been omitted in the italicised 
list, p. 25, 1. 16; and that the reference to note 2 should 
not be at the word ‘imagination,’ p. 24, but at the word 
‘trade,’ p. 25, 1. 7. My dear old friend, Dr. John Brown, 
sends me, from Jamieson’s Dictionary, the following satisfac- 
tory end to one of my difficulties :—‘ Coup the crans.’ The 
language is borrowed from the ‘cran,’ or trivet on which 
small pots are placed in cookery, which is sometimes turned 
with its feet uppermost by an awkward assistant. Thus it 
signifies to be completely upset. | 

Joun Ruski, 


| Byron. | 


‘Parching summer hath no warrant 
To consume this crystal well ; 
Rains, that make each brook a torrent, 
Neither sully it, nor swell.’ 


So was it, year by year, among the unthought-of hills. Lit- 
tle Duddon and child Rotha ran clear and glad ; and laughed 


PICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. i99 


from ledge to pool, and opened from pool to mere, translucent, 
through endless days of peace. 

But eastward, between her orchard plains, Loire locked her 
embracing dead in silent sands; dark with blood rolled Iser ; 
glacial-pale, Beresina-Lethe, by whose shore the weary hearts 
forgot their people, and their father’s house. 

Nor unsullied, Tiber ; nor unswoln, Arno and Aufidus; and 
Kuroclydon high on Helie’s wave; meantime, let our happy 
piety glorify the garden rocks with snowdrop circlet, and 
breathe the spirit of Paradise, where life is wise and innocent. 

Maps many have we, now-a-days clear in display of earth 
constituent, air current, and ocean tide. Shall we ever en- 
grave the map of meaner research, whose shadings shall con- 
tent themselves in the task of showing the depth, or drought, 
—the calm, or trouble, of Human Compassion ? 

For this is indeed all that is noble in the life of Man, and 
the source of all that is noble in the speech of Man. Had it 
narrowed itself then, in those days, out of all the world, into 
this peninsula between Cockermouth and Shap ? 

Not altogether so ; but indeed the Vocal piety seemed con- 
clusively to have retired (or excursed ?) into that mossy her- 
mitage, above Little Langdale. The Unvocal piety, with the 
uncomplaining sorrow, of Man, may have had a somewhat 
wider range, for aught we know: but history disregards those 
items ; and of firmly proclaimed and sweetly canorous religion, 
there really seemed at that juncture none to be reckoned upon, 
east of Ingleborough, or north of Criffel. Only under Furness 
Fells, or by Bolton Priory, it seems we can still write Ecclesi- 
astical Sonnets, stanzas on the force of Prayer, Odes to Duty, 
and complimentary addresses to the Deity upon His endurance 
for adoration. Far otherwise, over yonder, by Spezzia Bay, 
and Ravenna Pineta, and in ravines of Hartz. There, the 
softest voices speak the wildest words ; and Keats discourses 
of Endymion, Shelley of Demogorgon, Goethe of Lucifer, and 
Biirger of the Resurrection of Death unto Death—while even 
Puritan Scotland and Episcopal Anglia produce for us only 
these three minstrels of doubtful tone, who show but small 
respect for the ‘unco guid,’ put but limited faith in gifted 


200 PICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 


Gilfillan, and translate with unflinching frankness the Mor. 
gante Maggiore.’ 

Dismal the aspect of the spiritual world, or at least the 
sound of it, might well seem to the eyes and ears of Saints 
(such as we had) of the period—dismal in angels’ eyes also assur- 
edly! Yet is it possible that the dismalness in angelic sight 
may be otherwise quartered, as it were, from the way of mor- 
tal heraldry ; and that seen, and heard, of angels,—again I say 
—hesitatingly—is it possible that the goodness of the Unco 
Guid, and the gift of Gilfillan, and the word of Mr. Blatter- 
gowl, may severally not have been the goodness of God, the gift 
of God, nor the word of God: but that in the much blotted 
and broken efforts at goodness, and in the careless gift which 
they themselves despised,’ and in the sweet ryme and murmur 
of their unpurposed words, the Spirit of the Lord had, indeed; 
wandering, as in chaos days on lightless waters, gone forth 
in the hearts and from the lips of those other three strange 
prophets, even though they ate forbidden bread by the altar 
of the poured-out ashes, and even though the wild beast of the 
desert found them, and slew. 

This, at least, I know, that it had been well for England, 
though all her other prophets, of the Press, the Parliament, 
the Doctor’s chair, and the Bishop’s throne, had fallen silent ; 
so only that she had been able to understand with her heart 
here and there the simplest line of these, her despised. 


1¢Tt must be put by the original, stanza for stanza, and verse for 
verse ; and you will see what was permitted in a Catholic country anda 
bigoted age to Churchmen, on the score of Religion—and so tell those 
buffoons who accuse me of attacking the Liturgy. 

‘IT write in the greatest haste, it being the hour of the Corso, and I 
must go and buffoon with the rest. My daughter Allegra is just gone 
with the Countess G. in Count G.’s coach and six. Our old Cardinal is 
dead, and the new one not appointed yet—but the masquing goes on the 
same.’ (Letter to Murray, 355th in Moore, dated Ravenna, Feb. 7, 
1828.) ‘A dreadfully moral place, for you must not look at anybody’s 
wife, except your neighbour’s ’ 

? See quoted infra the mock, by Byron, of himself and all other mod- 
ern poets, Juan, canto iii. stanza 86, and compare canto xiv. stanza 8. 
In reference of future quotations the first numeral will stand always for 
canto ; the second for stanza ; the third, if necessary, for line, 


FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 201 
I take one at mere chance: 


‘Who thinks of self, when gazing on the sky ?’! 


Well, I don’t know; Mr. Wordsworth certainly did, and 
observed, with truth, that its clouds took a sober colouring 
in consequence of his experiences. It is much if, indeed, this 
sadness be unselfish, and our eyes have kept loving watch o’er 
Man’s Mortality. I have found it difficult to make any one 
now-a-days believe that such sobriety can be; and that Tur- 
ner saw deeper crimson than others in the clouds of Goldau. 
But that any should yet think the clouds brightened by Man’s 
Immortality instead of dulled by his death,—and, gazing on 
the sky, look for the day when every eye must gaze also—for 
behold, He cometh with the clouds—this it is no more possi- 
ble for Christian England to apprehend, however exhorted by 
her gifted and guid. 

‘But Byron was not thinking of such things !’—He, the 
reprobate! how should such as he think of Christ? 

Perhaps not wholly as you or I think of Him. Take, at 
chance, another line or two, to try: 


‘Carnage (so Wordsworth tells you) is God’s daughter ; ” 
If he speak truth, she is Christ’s sister, and 
Just now, behaved as in the Holy Land.’ 


Blasphemy, cry you, good reader? Are you sure you under- 
stand it? The first line I gave you was easy Byron—almost 
shallow Byron—these are of the man in his depth, and you 
will. not fathom them, like a tarn,—nor in a hurry. 

‘Just now behaved as in the Holy Land.’ How did Car- 
nage behave in the Holy Land then? You have all been 
greatly questioning, of late, whether the sun, which you find 
to be now going out, ever stood still. Did you in any lagging 
minute, on those scientific occasions, chance to reflect what he 


1 Tsland, ii. 16, where see context. 

* Juan, viii. 5; but, by your Lordship’s quotation, Wordsworth says 
‘instrument ’—not ‘ daughter.” Your Lordship had better have said 
‘Infant’ and taken the Woolwich authorities to witness: only Infant 


would not have rymed. 


202 FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 


was bid stand still for? or if not—will you please look—and 
what, also, going forth again as astrong man to run his course, 
he saw, rejoicing ? 

‘Then Joshua passed from Makkedah unto Libnah—and 
fought against Libnah. And the Lord delivered it and the 
king thereof into the hand of Israel, and he smote it with the 
edge of the sword, and all the souls that were therein.’ And 
from Lachish to Eglon, and from Eglon to Kirjath-Arba, and 
Sarah’s grave in the Amorites’ land, ‘and Joshua smote all the 
country of the hills and of the south—and of the vale and of 
the springs, and all their kings; he left none remaining, but 
utterly destroyed all that breathed—as the Lord God of Israel 
commanded.’ 

Thus ‘it is written :’ though you perhaps do not so often 
hear these texts preached from, as certain others about taking 
away the sins of the world. I wonder how the world would 
like to part with them ! hitherto it has always preferred part- 
ing first with its Life—and God has taken it at its word. 
But Death is not His Begotten Son, for all that; nor is the 
death of the innocent in battle carnage His ‘instrument for 
working out a pure intent’ as Mr. Wordsworth puts it ; but 
Man’s instrument for working out an impure one, as Byron 
would have you to know. Theology perhaps less orthodox, 
but certainly more reverent ;—neither is the Woolwich Infant 
a Child of God ; neither does the iron-clad ‘ Thunderer’ utter 
thunders of God—which facts, if you had had the grace or 
sense to learn from Byron, instead of accusing him of blas- 
phemy, it had been better at this day for you, and for many 
a savage soul also, by Euxine shore, and in Zulu and Afghan 
lands. 

It was neither, however, for the theology, nor the use, of 
these lines that I quoted them ; but to note this main point 
of Byron’s own character. He was the first great Englishman 
who felt the cruelty of war, and, in its cruelty, the shame. 
Its guilt had been known to George Fox—its folly shown 
practically by Penn. But the compassion of the pious world 
had still for the most part been shown only in keeping its 
stock of Barabbases unhanged if possible: and, till Byron 


FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 203 


came, neither Kunersdorf, Eylau, nor Waterloo, had taught 
the pity and the pride of men that 


‘The drying up a single tear has more 
Of honest fame than shedding seas of gore.’ ! 


Such pacific verse would not indeed have been acceptable to 
the Edinburgh volunteers on Portobello sands. But Byron 
can write a battle song too, when it is his cue to fight. If 
you look at the introduction to the Jsles of Greece, namely the 
85th and 86th stanzas of the 8rd canto of Don Juan,—you 
will find—what will you no find, if only you understand 
them! ‘He’ in the first line, remember, means the typical 
modern poet. 


‘Thus usually, when he was asked to sing, 
He gave the different nations something national. 
*T was all the same to him—‘‘ God save the King” 
Or ‘‘ Ga ira” according to the fashion all ; 
His muse made increment of anything 
From the high lyric down to the low rational : 
If Pindar sang horse-races, what should hinder 
Himself from being as pliable as Pindar ? 


‘In France, for instance, he would write a chanson ; 
In England a six-canto quarto tale ; 
In Spain, he’d make a ballad or romance on 
The last war—much the same in Portugal ; 
In Germany, the Pegasus he’d prance on 
Would be old Goethe’s—(see what says de Staél) 
In Italy he'd ape the ‘ Trecentisti ;’ 
In Greece, he’d sing some sort of hymn like this t’ ye. 


Note first here, as we did in Scott, the concentrating and 
foretelling power. The ‘God Save the Queen’ in England, 
fallen hollow now, as the ‘(a ira’ in France—not a man ip 


1 Juan, viii. 3; compare 14 and 63, with all its lovely context 61— 
68: then 82, and afterwards slowly and with thorough attention, the 
Devil's speech, beginning, ‘ Yes, Sir, you forget’ in scene 2 of The De- 
formed Transformed : then Sardanapalus’s, act i. scene 2, beginning ‘he 
is gone, and on his finger bears my signet,’ and finally, the Vision of 
Judgment, stanzas 3 to 5. 


204 FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 


France knowing where either France or ‘that’ (whatever 
‘that’ may be) is going to; nor the Queen of England dar- 
ing, for her life, to ask the tiniest Englishman to do a single 
thing he doesn’t like ;—nor any salvation, either of Queen or 
Realm, being any more possible to God, unless under the 
direction of the Royal Society: then, note the estimate of 
height and depth in poetry, swept in an instant, ‘high lyric 
to low rational.’ Pindar to Pope (knowing Pope’s height, too, 
all the while, no man better); then, the poetic power of 
France—resumed in a word—Béranger; then the cut at 
Marmion, entirely deserved, as we shall see, yet kindly given, 
for everything he names in these two stanzas is the best of its 
kind ; then Romance in Spain on—the last war, (present war 
not being to Spanish poetical taste), then, Goethe the real 
heart of all Germany, and last, the aping of the Trecentisti 
which has since consummated itself in Pre-Raphaelitism ! 
that also being the best thing Italy has done through Eng- 
land, whether in Rossetti’s ‘blessed damozels’ or Burne 
Jones's ‘ days of creation.’ Lastly comes the mock at himself 
—the modern English Greek—(followed up by the ‘degener- 
ate into hands like mine’ in the song itself) ; and then—to 
amazement, forth he thunders in his Achilles voice. We 
have had ‘one line of him in his clearness—five of him in his 
depth—-sixteen of him in his play. Hear now but these, out 
of his whole heart :— 


‘What,—silent yet ? and silent all? 
Ah no, the voices of the dead 
Sound like a distant torrent’s fall, 
And auswer, ‘‘ Let ove living head, 
But one, arise—we come—we come: 
—’Tis but the living who are dumb.’ 


” 


Resurrection, this, you see like Biirger’s ; but not of death 
unto death. 

‘Sound like a distant torrent’s fall.” I said the whole heart 
of Byron was in this passage. First its compassion, then its 
indignation, and the third element, not yet examined, that 
love of the beauty of this world in which the three—unholy 


FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 205 


—children, of its Fiery Furnace were like to each other ; but 
Byron the widest-hearted. Scott and Burns love Scotland 
more than Nature itself: for Burns the moon must rise over 
Cumnock Hiulls,—for Scott, the Rymer’s glen divide the 
Eildons ; but, for Byron, Loch-na-Gar with Ida, looks o’er 
Troy, and the soft murmurs of the Dee and the Bruar change 
into voices of the dead on distant Marathon. 
Yet take the parallel from Scott, by a field of homelier 
rest :— 
* And silence aids—though the steep hills 
Send to the lake a thousand rills; 
In summer tide, so soft they weep, 
The sound but lulls the ear asleep ; 
Your horse’s hoof-tread sounds too rude, 
So stilly is the solitude. 


Naught living meets the eye or ear, 
But well I ween the dead are near ; 
For though, in feudal strife, a foe 
Hath laid our Lady’s Chapel low, 

Yet still beneath the hallowed soil, 
The peasant rests him from his toil, 
And, dying, bids his bones be laid 
Where erst his simple fathers prayed.’ 


And last take the same note of sorrow—with Burns's finger 
on the fall of it: 


* Mourn, ilka grove the cushat kens, 
Ye hazly shaws and briery dens, 
Ye burnies, wimplin’ down your glens 
Wi’ toddlin’ din, 
Or foamin’ strang wi’ hasty stens 
Frae lin to lin,’ 


As you read, one after another, these fragments of chant by 
the great masters, does not a sense come upon you of some 
element in their passion, no less than in their sound, different, 
specifically, from that of ‘Parching summer hath no warrant’? 
Is it more profane, think you—or more tender—nay, perhaps, 
in the core of it, more true ? 


206 FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 


For instance, when we are told that 


‘Wharfe, as he moved along, 
To matins joined a mournful voice,’ ~ 


is this disposition of the river’s mind to pensive psalmody 
quite logically accounted for by the previous statement, 
(itself by no means rhythmically dulcet,) that 


‘ The boy is in the arms of Wharfe, 
And strangled by a merciless force’ ? 


Or, when we are led into the improving reflection, 


‘ How sweet were leisure, could it yield no more 
Then ’mid this wave-washed churchyard to recline, 
From pastoral graves extracting thoughts divine!’ 


—is the divinity of the extract assured to us by its being 
made at leisure, and in a reclining attitude—as compared 
with the meditations of otherwise active men, in an erect one ? 
Or are we perchance, many of us, still erring somewhat in 
our notions alike of Divinity and Humanity,—poetical ex- 
traction, and moral position ? 

On the chance of its being so, might I ask hearing for just 
a few words more of the school of Belial ? 

Their occasion, it must be confessed, is a quite unjustifiable 
one. Some very wicked people—mutineers, in fact—have 
retired, misanthropically, into an unfrequented part of the 
country, and there find themselves safe, indeed, but extremely 
thirsty. Whereupon Byron thus gives them to drink : 


‘ A little stream came tumbling from the height 
And straggling into ocean as it might. 
Its bounding crystal frolicked in the ray 
And gushed from cliff to crag with saltless spray, 
Close on the wild wide ocean,—yet as pure 
And fresh as Innocence ; and more secure. 
Its silver torrent glittered o'er the deep 
As the shy chamois’ eye o’erlooks the steep, 
While, far below, the vast and sullen swell 
Of ocean’s Alpine azure rose and fell.”! 


' Island, iii. 3, and compare, of shore surf, the ‘slings its high flakes, 
shivered into sleet’ of stanza 7. 


LICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 207 


Now, I beg, with such authority as an old workman may take 
concerning his trade, having also looked at a waterfall or two 
in my time, and not unfrequently at a wave, to assure the 
reader that here is entirely first-rate literary work. Though 
Lucifer himself had written it, the thing is itself good, and 
not only so, but unsurpassably good, the closing line being 
probably the best concerning the sea yet written by the race 
of the sea-kings. 

But Lucifer himself could not have written it ; neither any 
servant of Lucifer. I do not doubt but that most readers 
were surprised at my saying, in the close of my first paper, 
that Byron’s ‘style’ depended in any wise on his views re- 
specting the Ten Commandments. That so all-important a 
thing as ‘style’ should depend in the least upon so ri- 
diculous a thing as moral sense: or that Allegra’s father, 
watching her drive by in Count G.’s coach and six, had any 
remnant of so ridiculous a thing to guide,—or check,—his 
poetical passion, may alike seem more than questionable to 
the liberal and chaste philosophy of the existing British 
public. But, first of all, putting the question of who writes, 
or speaks, aside, do you, good reader, know good ‘style’ 
when you get it? Can you say, of half-a-dozen given lines 
taken anywhere out of a novel, or poem, or play, That is 
good, essentially, in style, or bad, essentially? and can you 
say why such half-dozen lines are good, or bad? 

I imagine that in most cases, the reply would be given with 
hesitation, yet if you will give me a little patience, and take 
some accurate pains, I can show you the main tests of style in 
the space of a couple of pages. 

I take two examples of absolutely perfect, and in manner 
highest, 7. e. kingly, and heroic, style: the first example in 
expression of anger, the second of love. 


(1) ‘We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us, 
His present, and your pains, we thank you for. 
When we have match’d our rackets to these balls, 
We will in France, by God's grace, play a set, 
Shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard.’ 


208 FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL, 


(2) ‘My gracious Silence, hail! 
Would’st thou have laughed, had I come coffin’d home 
That weep’st to see me triumph ? Ah, my dear, 
Such eyes the widows in Corioli wear, 
And mothers that lack sons.’ 


Let us note, point by point, the conditions of greatness 
common to both these passages, so opposite in temper. 

A. Absolute command over all passion, however intense ; 
this the first-of-first conditions, (see the King’s own sentence 
just before, ‘We are no tyrant, but a Christian King, Unto 
whose grace our passion is as subject As are our wretches 
fettered in our prisons’); and with this self-command, the 
supremely surveying grasp of every thought that is to be ut- 
tered, before its utterance; so that each may come in its 
exact place, time, and connection. The slightest hurry, the 
misplacing of a word, or the unnecessary accent on a syllable, 
would destroy the ‘style’ in an instant. 

B. Choice of the fewest and simplest words that can be 
found in the compass of the language, to express the thing 
meant: these few words being also arranged in the most 
straightforward and intelligible way ; allowing inversion only 
when the subject can be made primary without obscurity : 
(thus, ‘his present, and your pains, we thank you for’ is bet- 
ter than ‘we thank you for his present and your pains,’ 
because the Dauphin’s gift is by courtesy put before the Am- 
bassador’s pains ; but ‘when to these balls our rackets we have 
matched’ would have spoiled the style in a moment, because— 
I was going to have said, ball and racket are of equal rank, 
and therefore only the natural order proper; but also here 
the natural order is the desired one, the English racket to 
have precedence of the French ball. In the fourth line the 
‘in France’ comes first, as announcing the most important 
resolution of action; the ‘by God’s grace’ next, as the only 
condition rendering resolution possible ; the detail of issue 
follows with the strictest limit in the final word. The King 
does not say ‘danger,’ far less ‘dishonour,’ but ‘ hazard’ only; 
of that he is, humanly speaking, sure. 

C. Perfectly emphatic and clear utterance of the chosen 


FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 209 


words ; slowly in the degree of their importance, with omis- 
sion however of every word not absolutely required; and 
natural use of the familiar contractions of final dissyllable. 
Thus, ‘play a set shall strike’ is better than ‘play a set that 
shall strike,’ and ‘match’d’ is kingly short—no necessity could 
have excused ‘matched’ instead. On the contrary, the three 
first words, ‘We are glad,’ would have been spoken by the 
king more slowly and fully than any other syllables in the 
whole passage, first pronouncing the kingly ‘ we’ at its proud- 
est, and then the ‘are’ asa continuous state, and then the 
‘glad, as the exact contrary of what the ambassadors ex- 
pected him to be.’ 

D. Absolute spontaneity in doing all this, easily and neces- 
sarily as the heart beats. The king cannot speak otherwise 
than he does—nor the hero. The words not merely come to 
them, but are compelled to them. Even lisping numbers 
‘come,’ but mighty numbers are ordained, and inspired. 

EK. Melody in the words, changeable with their passion 
fitted to it exactly and the utmost of which the language is 
capable—the melody in prose being EHolian and variable—in 
verse, nobler by submitting itself to stricter law. I will 
enlarge upon this point presently. 

F, Utmost spiritual contents in the words; so that each 
carries not only its instant meaning, but a cloudy companion- 
ship of higher or darker meaning according to the passion 
—nearly always indicated by metaphor: ‘ play a set —some- 
times by abstraction—(thus in the second passage ‘ silence ’ 
for silent one) sometimes by description instead of direct epi- 
thet (‘ coffined’ for dead) but always indicative of there being 
more in the speaker’s mind than he has said, or than he can 
say, full though his saying be. On the quantity of this 
attendant fulness depends the majesty of style; that is to 


1A modern editor—of whom I will not use the expressions which 
occur to me—finding the ‘ we’ a redundant syllable in the iambic line, 
prints ‘we're.’ It is a little thing—but I do not recollect, in the forty 
years of my literary experience, any piece of editor’s retouch quite so 
base. But I don’t read the new editions much ; that must be allowed 
for. 


210 FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 


say, virtually, on the quantity of contained thought in briefest 
words, such thought being primarily loving and true: and 
this the sum of all—that nothing can be well said, but with 
truth, nor beautifully, but by love. 

These are the essential conditions of noble speech in prose 
and verse alike, but the adoption of the form of verse, and 
especially rymed verse, means the addition to all these quali- 
ties of one more; of music, that is to say, not Eolian merely, 
but Apolline ; a construction or architecture of words fitted 
and befitting, under external laws of time and harmony. 

When Byron says ‘rhyme is of the rude,’’ he means that 
Burns needs it,—while Henry the Fifth does not, nor Plato, 
nor Isaiah—yet in this need of it by the simple, it becomes all 
the more religious : and thus the loveliest pieces of Christian 
language are all in ryme—the best of Dante, Chaucer, Doug- 
las, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Sidney. 

Tam not now able to keep abreast with the tide of sidpaieain 
scholarship ; (nor, to say the truth, do I make the effort, the 





1 sland, ii. 5. I was going to say, ‘ Look to the context,’ but am fain 
to give it here; for the stanza, learned by heart, ought to be our school- 
introduction to the literature of the world, 


‘ Such was this ditty of Tradition’s days, 

Which to the dead a lingering fame conveys 

In song, where fame as yet hath left no sign 
Beyond the sound whose charm is half divine ; 
Which leaves no record to the sceptic eye, 

But yields young history all to harmony ; 

A boy Achilles, with the centaur’s lyre 

In hand, to teach him to surpass his sire. 

For one long-cherish’d ballad’s simple stave 
Rung from the rock, or mingled with the wave, 
Or from the bubbling streamlet’s grassy side, 

Or gathering mountain echoes as they glide, 
Hath greater power o’er each true heart and ear, 
Than all the columns Conquest’s minions rear ; 
Invites, when hieroglyphics are a theme 

For sages’ labours or the student's dream ; 
Attracts, when History’s volumes are a toil— 
The first, the freshest bud of Feeling’s soil. 

Such was this rnde rhyme—rhyme is of the rude, 
But such inspired the Norseman’s solitude, 

Who came and conquer’d ; such, wherever rise 
Lands which no foes destroy or civilise, 

Exist ; and what can our accomplish’d art 

Of verse do more than reach the awaken’d heart ?? 


FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 211 


first edge of its waves being mostly muddy, and apt to make 
a shallow sweep of the shore refuse :) so that I have no better 
book of reference by me than the confused essay on the an- 
tiquity of ryme at the end of Turner’s Anglo-Saxons. I cannot 
however conceive a more interesting piece of work, if not yet 
done, than the collection of sifted earliest fragments known 
of rymed song in European languages. Of Eastern I know 
nothing ; but, this side Hellespont, the substance of the mat- 
ter is all given in King Canute’s impromptu 


*Gaily (or is it sweetly ?—I forget which, and it’s no matter) sang the 
monks of Ely, 
As Knut the king came sailing by;’ 


much to be noted by any who make their religion lugubrious, 
and their Sunday the eclipse of the week. And observe fur- 
ther, that if Milton does not ryme, it is because his faculty of 
Song was concerning Loss, chiefly ; and he has little more 
than faculty of Croak, concerning Gain ; while Dante, though 
modern readers never go further with him than into the Pit, 
is stayed only by Casella in the ascent to the Rose of Heaven. 
So, Gibbon can write in Ais manner the Fall of Rome; but 
Virgil, in his manner, the rise of it; and finally Douglas, in 
his manner, bursts into such rymed passion of praise both of 
Rome and Virgil, as befits a Christian Bishop, and a good sub- 
ject.of the Holy See. 


‘Master of Masters—sweet source, and springing well, 
Wide where over all ringes thy heavenly bell ; 


Why should I then with dull forehead and vain, 
With rude ingene, and barane, emptive brain, 
With bad harsh speech, and lewit barbare tongue 
Presume to write, where thy sweet bell is rung, 
Or counterfeit thy precious wordis dear? 

Na, na—not so; but kneel when I them hear. 
But farther more—and lower to descend 

Forgive me, Virgil, if I thee offend 

Pardon thy scolar, suffer him to ryme 

Since thou wast but ane mortal man sometime,’ 


212 FICTION—FAIR AND FoOvUr. 


‘Before honour is humility.’ Does not clearer light come 
for you on that law after reading these nobly pious words? 
And note you whcse humility? How is it that the sound of 
the bell comes so instinctively into his chiming verse? This 
gentle singer is the son of—Archibald Bell-the-Cat ! 

And now perhaps you can read with right sympathy the 
scene in Marmion between his father and King James. 


‘His hand the monarch sudden took— 
Now, by the Bruce's soul, 
Angus, my hasty speech forgive, 
For sure as doth his spirit live 
As he said of the Douglas old 
I well may say of you,— 
That never king did subject hold, 
In speech more free, in war more bold, 
More tender and more true: 
And while the king his hand did strain 
The old man’s tears fell down like rain.’ 


I believe the most infidel of scholastic readers can scarcely 
but perceive the relation between the sweetness, simplicity, 
and melody of expression in these passages, and the gentle- 
ness of the passions they express, while men who are not 
scholastic, and yet are true scholars, will recognise further in 
them that the simplicity of the educated is lovelier than the 
simplicity of the rude. Hear next a piece of Spenser’s teach- 
ing how rudeness itself may become more beautiful even by 
its mistakes, if the mistakes are made lovingly. 


‘Ye shepherds’ daughters that dwell on the green, 

Hye you there apace ; 

Let none come there but that virgins been 
To adorn her grace: 

And when you come, whereas she in place, 

See that your rudeness do not you disgrace ; 
Bind your fillets fast, 
And gird in your waste, 

For more fineness, with a taudry lace.’ 


FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 213 


* Bring hither the pink and purple cullumbine 

With gyllifiowers ; 

Bring coronatiOns, and sops in wine, 
Worn of paramours ; 

Strow me the ground with daffadowndillies 

And cowslips, and kingcups, and loved lilies ; 
The pretty paunce 
And the chevisaunce 

Shall match with the fair flowre-delice.’ ! 


Two short pieces more only of master song, and we have 
enough to test all by. 


(2) ‘No more, no more, since thou art dead, 

Shall we e’er bring coy brides to bed, 
No more, at yearly festivals, 

We cowslip balls 
Or chains of columbines shall make, 
For this or that occasion’s sake. 
No, no! our maiden pleasures be 
Wrapt in thy winding-sheet with thee.’ ? 


(3) ‘ Death is now the pheenix rest, 
And the turtle’s loyal breast 
To eternity doth rest. 
Truth may seem, but cannot be; 
Beauty brag, but ’tis not she: 
Truth and beauty buried be.’ ? 


If now, with the echo of these perfect verses in your mind, 
you turn to Byron, and glance over, or recall to memory, 
enough of him to give means of exact comparison, you will, 
or should, recognise these following kinds of mischief in him. 
First, if any one offends him—as for instance Mr. Southey, or 
Lord Elgin—‘ his manners have not that repose that marks 
the caste,’ &e. This defect in his Lordship’s style, being my- 


? Shepherd’s Calendar. ‘Coronatiin,’ loyal-pastoral for Carnation ; 
‘sops in wine,’ jolly-pastoral for double pink; ‘ paunce,’ thoughtless 
pastoral for pansy; ‘chevisaunce’ I don’t know, (not in Gerarde) ; 
‘flowre-delice ’—pronounce dellice—half made up of ‘ delicate’ and ‘de 
licious.’ 

’ Herrick, Dirge for Jephihal’s Daughter. * Passionate Pilgrim. 


214 FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 


self scrupulously and even painfully reserved in the use of 
vituperative language, I need not say how deeply I de- 
plore.’ 

Secondly. In the best and most violet-bedded hits of his 
work there is yet, as compared with Elizabethan and earlier 
verse, a strange taint ; and indefinable—evening flavour of 
Covent Garden, as it were ;—not to say, escape of gas in the 
Strand. That is simply what it proclaims itself—London air. 
if he had lived all his life in Green-head Ghyll, things would 
of course have been different. But it was his fate to come to 
town—modern town—like Michael’s son; and modern Lon- 
don (and Venice) are answerable for the state of their drains, 
not Byron. 

Thirdly. His melancholy is without any relief whatsoever ; 
his jest sadder than his earnest; while, in Elizabethan work, 
all lament is full of hope, and all pain of balsam. 

Of this evil he has himself told you the cause in a single 
line, prophetic of all things since and now. ‘ Where he gazed, 
a gloom pervaded space.’ ” 

So that, for instance, while Mr. Wordsworth, on a visit to 
town, being an exemplary early riser, could walk, felicitous, 
on Westminster Bridge, remarking how the city now did like 
a garment wear the beauty of the morning; Byron, rising 
somewhat later, contemplated only the garment which the 
beauty of the morning had by that time received for wear 
from the city : and again, while Mr. Wordsworth, in irrepres- 
sible religious rapture, calls God to witness that the houses 
-seem asleep, Byron, lame denion as he was, flying smoke- 
drifted, unroofs the houses at a glance, and sees what the 


‘In this point, compare the Curse of Minerva with the Tears of the 
fuses. 

> *He,’—Lucifer; (Vision of Judgment, 24). It is precisely because 
Byron was vot his servant, that he could see the gloom. To the Devil’s 
true servants, their Master's presence brings both cheerfulness and pros- 
perity ;—with a delightful sense of their own wisdom and virtue; and 
of the ‘progress’ of things in general :—in smooth seaand fair weather, 
—and with no need either of helm touch, or oar toil: as when once one 


is well within the edge of Maelstrom, 


FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 215 


mighty cockney heart of them contains in the still lying of it, 
and will stir up to purpose in the waking business of it, 


‘The sordor of civilisation, mixed 
With all the passions which Man’s fall hath fixed.’ ! 


Fourthly, with this steadiness of bitter melancholy, there is 
joined a sense of the material beauty, both of inanimate na- 
ture, the lower animals, and human beings, which in the iri- 
descence, colour-depth, and morbid (I use the word deliberately) 
mystery and softness of it,—with other qualities indescribable 
by any single words, and only to be analysed by extreme care, 
—is found, to the full, only in five men that I know of in 
modern times; namely Rousseau, Shelley, Byron, Turner, 
and myself,—differing totally and throughout the entire group 
of us, from the delight in clear-struck beauty of Angelico and 
the Trecentisti ; and separated, much more singularly, from 
the cheerful joys of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Scott, by its 
unaccountable affection for ‘Rokkes blak’ and other forms 
of terror and power, such as those of the ice-oceans, which to 
Shakespeare were only Alpine rheum ; and the Via Malas and 
Diabolic Bridges which Dante would have condemned none 
but lost souls to climb, or cross ;—all this love of impending 
mountains, coiled thunder-clouds, and dangerous sea, being 
joined in us with a sulky, almost ferine, love of retreat in val- 
leys of Charmettes, gulphs of Spezzia, ravines of Olympus, low 
lodgings in Chelsea, and close brushwood at Coniston. 

And, lastly, also in the whole group of us, glows volcanic 
instinct of Astreean justice returning not to, but up out of, the 
earth, which will not at all suffer us to rest any more in Pope’s 
serene ‘whatever is, is right ;’ but holds, on the contrary, pro- 
found conviction that about ninety-nine hundredths of what- 
ever at present is, is wrong: conviction making four of us, 


1 Tsland, ii. 4 ; perfectly orthodox theology, you observe; no denial 
of the fall,—nor substitution of Bacterian birth for it. Nay, nearly 
Evangelical theology, in contempt for the human heart ; but with deeper 
than Evangelical humility, acknowledging also what is sordid in its 
civilisation. 


216 FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 


according to our several manners, leaders of revolution for 
the poor, and declarers of political doctrine monstrous to the 
ears of mercenary mankind ; and driving the fifth, less san- 
guine, into mere painted-melody of lament over the fallacy of 
Hope and the implacableness of Fate. 

In Byron the indignation, the sorrow, and the effort are 
joined to the death : and they are the parts of his nature (as 
of mine also in its feebler terms), which the selfishly comforta- 
ble public have, literally, no conception of whatever ; and from 
which the piously sentimental public, offering up daily the 
pure emotion of divine tranquillity, shrink with anathema not 
unembittered by alarm. 

Concerning which matters I hope to speak further and with 
more precise illustration in my next paper; but, seeing that this 
present one has been hitherto somewhat sombre, and perhaps, 
to gentle readers, not a little discomposing, I will conclude it 
with a piece of light biographic study, necessary to my plan, 
and as conveniently admissible in this place as afterwards ;— 
namely, the account of the manner in which Scott—whom we 
shall always find, as aforesaid, to be in salient and palpable 
elements of character, of the World, worldly, as Burns is of the 
Flesh, fleshly, and Byron of the Deuce, damnable,—spent his 
Sunday. 

As usual, from Lockhart’s farrago we cannot find out the 
first thing we want to know,—whether Scott worked after his 
week-day custom, on the Sunday morning. But, I gather, 
not ; at all events his household and his cattle rested (L. iii. 
108). I imagine he walked out into his woods, or read quietly 
in his study. Immediately after breakfast, whoever was in 
the house, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I shall read prayers at 
eleven, when I expect you all to attend’ (vii. 306). Question 
of college and other externally unanimous prayers settled for 
us very briefly: ‘if you have no faith, have at least manners.’ 
He read the Church of England service, lessons and all, the 
latter, if interesting, eloquently (7bid.). After the service, one 
of Jeremy Taylor’s sermons (vi. 188). Afterthe sermon,ifthe . 
weather was fine, walk with his family, dogs included and 
guests, to cold picnic (iii. 109), followed by short extempore 


FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 217 


biblical novelettes; for he had his Bible, the Old Testa- 
ment especially, by heart, it having been his mother’s last gift 
to him (vi. 174). These lessons to his children in Bible his- 
tory were always given, whether there was picnic or not. For 
the rest of the afternoon he took his pleasure in the woods 
with Tom Purdie, who also always appeared at his master’s 
elbow on Sunday after dinner was over, and drank long life 
to the laird and his lady and all the good company, in a quaigh 
of whiskey or a tumbler of wine, according to his fancy (vi. 
195). Whatever might happen on the other evenings of the 
week, Scott always dined at home on Sunday ; and with old 
friends: never, unless inevitably, receiving any person with 
whom he stood on ceremony (v. 8335). He came into the room 
rubbing his hands like a boy arriving at home for the holidays, 
his Peppers and Mustards gambolling about him, ‘and even 
the stately Maida grinning and wagging his tail with sympa- 
thy.’ For the usquebaugh of the less honoured week-days, at 
the Sunday board he circulated the champagne briskly during 
dinner, and considered a pint of claret each man’s fair share 
afterwards (v. 339). In the evening, music being to the Scot- 
tish worldly mind indecorous, he read aloud some favourite 
author, for the amusement or edification of his little circle. 
Shakespeare it might be, or Dryden,—Johnson, or Joanna 
Baillie,—Crabbe, or Wordsworth. But in those days ‘Byron 
was pouring out his spirit fresh and full, and if a new piece 
from is hand had appeared, it was sure to be read by Scott the 
Sunday evening afterwards ; and that with such delighted em- 
phasis as showed how completely the elder bard had kept up 
his enthusiasm for poetry at pitch of youth, and all his admira- 
tion of genius, free, pure, and unstained by the least drop of 
literary jealousy’ (v. 341). 

With such necessary and easily imaginable varieties as 
chanced in having Dandy Dinmont or Captain Brown for 
guests at Abbotsford, or Colonel Mannering, Counsellor Pley- 
dell, and Dr. Robertson in Castle Street, such was Scott's 
habitual Sabbath : a day, we perceive, of eating the fat, (din- 
ner, presumably not cold, being a work of necessity and mercy 
—thou also, even thou, Saint Thomas of Trumbull, hast 


218 FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL, 


thine !) and drinking the sweet, abundant in the manner of 
Mr. Southey’s cataract of Lodore,—‘ Here it comes, sparkling.’ 
A day bestrewn with coronatidns and sops in wine; deep in 
libations to good hope and fond memory ; a day of rest to 
beast, and mirth to man, (as also to sympathetic beasts that 
can be merry,) and concluding itself in an Orphic hour of de- 
light, signifying peace on Tweedside, and goodwill to men, 
there or far away ;—always excepting the French, and Boney. 

‘Yes, and see what it all came to in the end.’ 

Not so, dark-virulent Minos-Mucklewrath ; the end came of 
quite other things: of these, came such length of days and 
peace as Scott had in his Fatherland, and such immortality as 
he has in all lands. 

Nathless, firm, though deeply courteous, rebuke, for his 
sometimes overmuch lght-mindedness, was administered to 
him by the more grave and thoughtful Byron. For the Lord 
Abbot of Newstead knew his Bible by heart as well as Scott, 
though it had never been given him by his mother as her dear- 
est possession. Knew it, and, what was more, had thought of 
it, and sought in it what Scott had never cared to think, 
nor been fain to seek. 

And loving Scott well, and always doing him every possible 
pleasure in the way he sees to be most agreeable to him—as, 
for instance, remembering with precision, and writing down 
the very next morning, every blessed word that the Prince 
Regent had been pleased to say of him before courtly audi- 
ence,—he yet conceived that such cheap ryming as his own 
Bride of Abydos, for instance, which he had written from be- 
ginning to end in four days, or even the travelling reflections 
of Harold and Juan on men and women, were scarcely steady 
enough Sunday afternoon’s reading for a patriarch-Merlin like 
Scott. So he dedicates to him a work of atruly religious ten- 
dency, on which for his own part he has done his best,—the 
drama of Cain. Of which dedication the virtual significance 
to Sir Walter might be translated thus. Dearest and last of 
Border soothsayers, thou hast indeed told us of Black Dwarfs, 
and of White Maidens, also of Grey Friars, and Green Fairies ; 
also of sacred hollies by the well, and haunted crooks in the 


FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 219 


glen. But of the bushes that the black dogs rend in the 
woods of Phlegethon ; and of the crooks in the glen, and the 
bickerings of the burnie where ghosts meet the mightiest of 
us ; and of the black misanthrope, who is by no means yet a 
dwarfed one, and concerning whom wiser creatures than 
Hobbie Elliot may tremblingly ask ‘Gude guide us, what’s 
yon?’ hast thou yet known, seeing that thou hast yet told, 
nothing. 

Scott may perhaps have his answer. We shall in good time 
hear. 

JouN Ruskin. 


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THE 
ELEMENTS OF DRAWING 


THREE LETTERS TO BEGINNERS 


WITH ILLUSTRATIONS DRAWN BY THE AUTHOR 





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PREFACE. 


Ir may perhaps be thought, that in prefacing a Manual of 
Drawing, I ought to expatiate on the reasons why drawing 
should be learned ; but those reasons appear to me so many 
and so weighty, that I cannot quickly state or enforce them. 
With the reader’s permission, as this volume is too large al- 
ready, I will waive all discussion respecting the importance 
of the subject, and touch only on those points which may ap- 
pear questionable in the method of its treatment. 

In the first place, the book is not calculated for the use of 
children under the age of twelve or fourteen. I do not think 
it advisable to engage a child in any but the most voluntary 
practice of art. If it has talent for drawing, it will be con- 
tinually scrawling on what paper it can get; and should be 
allowed to scrawl at its own free will, due praise being given 
for every appearance of care, or truth, in its efforts. It should 
be allowed to amuse itself with cheap colours almost as soon 
as it has sense enough to wish for them. If it merely daubs 
the paper with shapeless stains, the colour-box may be taken 
away till it knows better: but as soon as it begins painting 
red coats on soldiers, striped flags to ships, etc., it should 
have colours at command ; and, without restraining its choice 
of subject in that imaginative and historical art, of a military 
tendency, which children delight in, (generally quite as valu- 
able, by the way, as any historical art delighted in by their 
elders,) it should be gently led by the parents to try to draw, 
in such childish fashion as may be, the things it can see and 


224 PREFACE. 


likes,—birds, or butterflies, or flowers, or fruit. In later years, 
the indulgence of using the colour should only be granted as 
a reward, after it has shown care and progress in its drawings 
with pencil. A limited number of good and amusing prints 
should always be within a boy’s reach : in these days of cheap 
illustration he can hardly possess a volume of nursery tales 
without good woodcuts in it, and should be encouraged to copy 
what he likes best of this kind ; but should be firmly restricted 
to a few prints and to a few books. If a child has many toys, 
it will get tired of them and break them ; if a boy has many 
prints he will merely dawdle and scrawl over them; it is by 
the limitation of the number of his possessions that his pleas- 
ure in them is perfected, and his attention concentrated. The 
parents need give themselves no trouble in instructing him, as 
far as drawing is concerned, beyond insisting upon economi- 
cal and neat habits with his colours and paper, showing him 
the best way of holding pencil and rule, and, so far as they 
take notice of his work, pointing out where a line is too short 
or too long, or too crooked, when compared with the copy ; 
accuracy being the first and last thing they look for. If the 
child shows talent for inventing or grouping figures, the par- 
ents should neither check, nor praise it. They may laugh with 
it frankly, or show pleasure in what it has done, just as they 
show pleasure in seeing it well, or cheerful ; but they must 
not praise it for being clever, any more than they would praise 
it for being stout. They should praise it only for what costs 
it self-denial, namely attention and hard work; otherwise 
they will make it work for vanity’s sake, and always badly. 
The best books to put into its hands are those illustrated 
by George Cruikshank or by Richter. (See Appendix.) At 
about the age of twelve or fourteen, it is quite time enough 
to set youth or girl to serious work ; and then this book will, 
I think, be useful to them ; and I have good hope it may be 
so, likewise, to persons of more advanced age wishing to know 
something of the first principles of art. 

Yet observe, that the method of study recommended is not 
brought forward as absolutely the best, but only as the best 
which I can at present devise for an isolated student. It is 


PREFACE. 225 


very likely that farther experience in teaching may enable me 
to modify it with advantage in several important respects ; but 
I am sure the main principles of it are sound, and most of the 
exercises as useful as they can be rendered without a master’s 
superintendence. The method differs, however, so materially 
from that generally adopted by drawing-masters, that a word 
or two of explanation may be needed to justify what might 
otherwise be thought wilful eccentricity. 

The manuals at present published on the subject of drawing 
are all directed, as faras I know, to one or other of two ob- 
jects. Hither they propose to give the student a power of dex- 
terous sketching with pencil or water-colour, so as to emulate 
(at considerable distance) the slighter work of our second-rate 
artists ; or they propose to give him such accurate command 
of mathematical forms as may afterwards enable him to design 
rapidly and cheaply for manufactures. When drawing is taught 
as an accomplishment, the first 1s the aim usually proposed ; 
while the second is the object kept chiefly in view at Marl- 
borough House, and in the branch Government Schools of 
Design. 

Of the fitness of the modes of study adopted in those schools, 
to the end specially intended, judgment is hardly yet pos- 
sible ; only, it seems to me, that we are all too much in the 
habit of confusing art as applied to manufacture, with manufact- 
ure itself. For instance, the skill by which an inventive work- 
man designs and moulds a beautiful cup, is skill of true art ; but 
the skill by which that cup is copied and afterwards multi- 
plied a thousandfold, is skill of manufacture : and the faculties 
which enable one workman to design and elaborate his original 
piece, are not to be developed by the same system of instruc- 
tion as those which enable another to produce a maximum 
number of approximate copies of it ina given time. Farther : 
it is surely inexpedient that any reference to purposes of 
manufacture should interfere with the education of the artist 
himself. Try first to manufacture a Raphael ; then let Raph- 
ael direct your manufacture. He will design you a plate, or 
cup, or a house, or a palace, whenever you want it, and de- 
sign them in the most convenient and rational way ; but de 


226 PREFACE. 


not let your anxiety to reach the platter and the cup interfere 
with your education of the Raphael. Obtain first the best 
work you can, and the ablest hands, irrespective of any con- 
sideration of economy or facility of production. Then leave 
your trained artist to determine how far art can be popular- 
ised, or manufacture ennobled. 

Now, I believe that (irrespective of differences in individual 
temper and character) the excellence of an artist, as such, 
depends wholly on refinement of perception, and that it is 
this, mainly, which a master or a school can teach; so 
that while powers of invention distinguish man from man, 
powers of perception distinguish school from school. All 
great schools enforce delicacy of drawing and subtlety of 
sight: and the only rule which I have, as yet, found to be 
without exception respecting art, is that all great art is deli- 
cate. 

Therefore, the chief aim and bent of the following system 
is to obtain, first, a perfectly patient, and, to the utmost of 
the pupil’s power, a delicate method of work, such as may 
ensure his seeing truly. For I am nearly convinced, that 
when once we see keenly enough, there is very little difficulty 
in drawing what we see; but, even supposing that this diffi- 
culty be still great, I believe that the sight is a more im- 
portant thing than the drawing ; and I would rather teach 
drawing that my pupils may learn to love Nature, than teach 
the looking at Nature that they may learn to draw. It is 
surely also a more important thing for young people and un- 
professional students, to know how to appreciate the art of 
others, than to gain much power in art themselves. Now the 
modes of sketching ordinarily taught are inconsistent with 
this power of judgment. No person trained to the superficial 
execution of modern water-colour painting, can understand 
the work of Titian or Leonardo ; they must for ever remain 
blind to the refinement of such men’s pencilling, and the pre- 
cision of their thinking. But, however slight a degree of 
manipulative power the student may reach by pursuing the 
mode recommended to him in these letters, I will answer for 
it that he cannot go once through the advised exercises without 


PREFACE. — 227 


beginning to understand what masterly work means ; and, by 
the time he has gained some proficiency in them, he will have 
a pleasure in looking at the painting of the great schools, and 
a new perception of the exquisiteness of natural scenery, such 
as would repay him for much more labour than I have asked 
~ him to undergo. 

That labour is, nevertheless, sufficiently irksome, nor is it 
possible that it should be otherwise, so long as the pupil 
works unassisted by a master. For the smooth and straight 
road which admits unembarrassed progress must, I fear, be 
dull as well as smooth ; and the hedges need to be close and 
trim when there is no guide to warn or bring back the erring 
traveller. The system followed in this work will, therefore, 
at first, surprise somewhat sorrowfully those who are familiar 
with the practice of our class at the Working Men’s College ; 
for there, the pupil, having the master at his side to extricate 
him from such embarrassments as his first efforts may lead 
into, is at once set to draw from a solid object, and soon finds 
entertainment in his efforts and interest in his difficulties. 
Of course the simplest object which it is possible to set before 
the eye is a sphere; and practically, I find a child’s toy, a 
white leather ball, better than anything else ; as the gradations 
on balls of plaster of Paris, which I use sometimes to try the 
strength of pupils who have had previous practice, are a little 
too delicate for a beginner to perceive. It has been objected 
that a circle, or the outline of a sphere, is one of the most 
difficult of all lines to draw. Itis so; but I do not want it to 
be drawn. All that his study of the ball is to teach the pupil, 
is the way in which shade gives the appearance of projection. 
This he learns most satisfactorily from a sphere ; because any 
solid form, terminated by straight lines or flat surfaces, owes 
some of its appearance of projection to its perspective ; but in 
the sphere, what, without shade, was a flat circle, becomes, 
merely by the added shade, the image of a solid ball; and this 
fact is just as striking to the learner, whether his circular out- 
line be true or false. He is, therefore, never allowed to 
trouble himself about it ; if he makes the ball look as oval as 
an egg, the degree of error is simply pointed out to him, and 


228 PREFACE. 


he does better next time, and better still the next. But his 
mind is always fixed on the gradation of shade, and the out- 
line left to take, in due time, care of itself. I call it outline, 
for the sake of immediate intelligibility,—strictly speaking, it 
is merely the edge of the shade; no pupil in my class being 
ever allowed to draw an outline, in the ordinary sense. It is 
pointed out to him, from the first, that Nature relieves one 
mass, or one tint, against another; but outlines none. The 
outline exercise, the second suggested in this letter, is recom- 
mended, not to enable the pupil to draw outlines, but as the 
only means by which, unassisted, he can test his accuracy of 
eye, and discipline his hand. When the master is by, errors 
in the form and extent of shadows can be pointed out as 
easily as in outline, and the handling can be gradually cor- 
rected in details of the work. But the solitary student can 
only find out his own mistakes by help of the traced limit, and 
can only test the firmness of his hand by an exercise in which 
nothing but firmness is required ; and during which all other 
considerations (as of softness, complexity, &c.) are entirely 
excluded. 

Both the system adopted at the Working Men’s College, 
and that recommended here, agree, however, in one principle, 
which I consider the most important and special of all that 
are involved in my teaching: namely, the attaching its full 
importance, from the first, to local colour. I believe that the 
endeavour to separate, in the course of instruction, the ob- 
servation of light and shade from that of local colour, has 
always been, and must always be, destructive of the student’s 
power of accurate sight, and that it corrupts his taste as much 
as it retards his progress. I will not occupy the reader’s time 
by any discussion of the principle here, but I wish him to 
note it as the only distinctive one in my system, so far as it 7s 
asystem. Tor the recommendation to the pupil to copy faith- 
fully, and without alteration, whatever natural object he 
chooses to study, is serviceable, among other reasons, just be- 
cause it gets rid of systematic rules altogether, and teaches 
people to draw, as country lads learn to ride, without saddle 
or stirrups ; my main object being, at first, not to get my 


PREFACE, ° 229 


pupils to hold their reins prettily, but to “sit like a jack. 
anapes, never off.” 

In these written instructions, therefore, it has always been 
with regret that I have seen myself forced to advise anything 
like monotonous or formal discipline. But, to the unassisted 
student, such formalities are indispensable, and I am not with- 
out hope that the sense of secure advancement, and the pleas- 
ure of independent effort, may render the following out of 
even the more tedious exercises here proposed, possible to the 
solitary learner, without weariness. But if it should be other- 
wise, and he finds the first steps painfully irksome, I can only 
desire him to consider whether the acquirement of so great a 
power as that of pictorial expression of thought be not worth 
some toil; or whether it is likely, in the natural order of 
matters in this working world, that so great a gift should be 
attainable by those who will give no price for it. 

One task, however, of some difficulty, the student will find 
I have not imposed upon him : namely, learning the laws of 
perspective. It would be worth while to learn them, if he 
could do so easily ; but without a master’s help, and in the 
way perspective is at present explained in treatises, the diffi- 
culty is greater than the gain. For perspective is not of the 
slightest use, except in rudimentary work. You can draw the 
rounding line of a table in perspective, but you cannot draw 
the sweep of a sea bay ; you can foreshorten a log of wood 
by it, but you cannot foreshorten an arm. Its laws are too 
gross and few to be applied to any subtle form ; therefore, as 
you must learn to draw the subtle forms by the eye, certainly 
you may draw the simple ones. No great painters ever 
trouble themselves about perspective, and very few of them 
know its laws; they draw everything by the eye, and, nat- 
urally enough, disdain in the easy parts of their work rules 
which cannot help them in difficult ones. It would take 
about a month’s labour to draw imperfectly, by laws of per- 
spective, what any great Venetian will.draw perfectly in five 
minutes, when he is throwing a wreath of leaves round a 
head, or bending the curves of a pattern in and out among 
the folds of drapery. It is true that when perspective wag 


230 PREFACE. 


first discovered, everybody amused themselves with it; and 
all the great painters put fine saloons and arcades behind 
their madonnas, merely to show that they could draw in per: 
spective : but even this was generally done by them only to 
catch the public eye, and they disdained the perspective so 
much, that though they took the greatest pains with the cir- 
clet of a crown, or the rim of a crystal cup, in the heart of 
their picture, they would twist their capitals of columns and 
towers of churches about in the background in the most wan- 
ton way, wherever they liked the lines to go, provided only 
they left just perspective enough to please the public. In 
modern days, I doubt if any artist among us, except David 
Roberts, knows so much perspective as would enable him to 
draw a Gothic arch to scale, at a given angle and distance. 
Turner, though he was professor of perspective to the Royal 
Academy, did not know what he professed, and never, as far 
as I remember, drew a single building in true perspective in 
his life ; he drew them only with as much perspective as suited 
him. Prout also knew nothing of perspective, and twisted 
his buildings, as Turner did, into whatever shapes he liked. 
I do not justify this; and would recommend the student at 
least to treat perspective with common civility, but to pay no 
court to it. The best way he can learn it, by himself, is by 
taking a pane of glass, fixed in a frame, so that it can be set 
upright before the eye, at the distance at which the proposed 
sketch is intended to be seen. Let the eye be placed at some 
fixed point, opposite the middle of the pane of glass, but as 
high or as low as the student likes ; then with a brush at the 
end of a stick, and a little body-colour that will adhere to the 
elass, the lines of the landscape may be traced on the glass, 
as you see them through it. When so traced they are all in 
true perspective. If the glass be sloped in any direction, the 
lines are still in true perspective, only it is perspective cal- 
culated for a sloping plane, while common perspective always 
supposes the plane of the picture to be vertical. It is good, 
in early practice, to accustom yourself to enclose your subject, 
before sketching it, with a light frame of wood held upright 
before you ; it will show you what you may legitimately take 


PREFACE. 231 


into your picture, and what choice there is between a narrow 
foreground near you, and a wide one farther off; also, what 
height of tree or building you can properly take in, &c.* 

Of figure drawing, nothing is said in the following pages, 
because I do not think figures, as chief subjects, can be drawn 
to any good purpose by an amateur. As accessaries in land- 
scape, they are just to be drawn on the same principles as 
anything else. 

Lastly : If any of the directions given subsequently to the 
student should be found obscure by him, or if at any stage of 
the recommended practice he finds himself in difficulties 
which I have not provided enough against, he may apply by 
letter to Mr. Ward, who is my under drawing-master at the 
Working Men’s College (45 Great Ormond Street), and who 
will give any required assistance, on the lowest terms that 
can renumerate him for the occupation of his time. I have 
not leisure myself in general to answer letters of inquiry, 
however much I may desire to do so; but Mr. Ward has al- 
ways the power of referring any question to me when he 
thinks it necessary. I have good hope, however, that enough 
guidance is given in this work to prevent the occurrence of 
any serious embarrassment; and I believe that the student 
who obeys its directions will find, on the whole, that the best 
answer of questions is perseverance ; and the best drawing- 
masters are the woods and hills. 


* Tf the student is fond of architecture, and wishes to know more of 
perspective than he can learn in this rough way, Mr. Runciman (of 49 
Accacia Road, St. John’s Wood), who was my first drawing-master, and 
to whom I owe many happy hours, can teach it him quickly, easily, and 
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THE 


HLEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


LETTER I. 
ON FIRST PRACTICE, 


My Dear Reaper: 

Whether this book is to be of use to you or not, depends 
wholly on your reason for wishing to learn to draw. If you 
desire only to possess a graceful accomplishment, to be able 
to converse in a fluent manner about drawing, or to amuse 
yourself listlessly in listless hours, I cannot help you : but if 
you wish to learn drawing that you may be able to set down 
clearly, and usefully, records of such things as cannot be de- 
scribed in words, either to assist your own memory of them, 
or to convey distinct ideas of them to other people; if you 
wish to obtain quicker perceptions of the beauty of the 
natural world, and to preserve something like a true image of 
beautiful things that pass away, or which you must yourself 
leave ; if, also, you wish to understand the minds of great 
painters, and to be able to appreciate their work sincerely, 
seeing it for yourself, and loving it, not merely taking up the 
thoughts of other people about it ; then I can help you, or, 
which is better, show you how to help yourself. 

Only you must understand, first of all, that these powers 
which indeed are noble and desirable, cannot be got without 
work. It is much easier to learn to draw well, than it is to 
learn to play well on any musical instrument ; but you know 
that it takes three or four years of practice, giving three or 


234 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


four hours a day, to acquire even ordinary command oyer the 
keys of a piano; and you must not think that a masterly com- 
mand of your pencil, and the knowledge of what may be done 
with it, can be acquired without painstaking, or in a very 
short time. The kind of drawing which is taught, or sup- 
posed to be taught, in our schools, in a term or two, perhaps 
at the rate of an hour’s practice a week, is not drawing at all. 
It is only the performance of a few dexterous (not always even 
that) evolutions on paper with a black-lead pencil ; profitless 
alike to performer and beholder, unless as a matter of vanity, 
and that the smallest possible vanity. If any young person, 
after being taught what is, in polite circles, called ‘‘ drawing,” 
will try to copy the commonest piece of veal work—suppose 
a lithograph on the titlepage of a new opera air, or a woodcut 
in the cheapest illustrated newspaper of the day—they will 
find themselves entirely beaten. And yet that common litho- 
graph was drawn with coarse chalk, much more difficult to 
manage than the pencil of which an accomplished young lady 
is supposed to have command ; and that woodcut was drawn 
in urgent haste, and half spoiled in the cutting afterwards ; 
and both were done by people whom nobody thinks of as ar- 
tists, or praises for their power; both were done for daily 
bread, with no more artist’s pride than any simple handicrafts- 
men feel in the work they live by. 

Do not, therefore, think that you can learn drawing, any more 
than a new language, without some hard and disagreeable la- 
bour. But do not, on the other hand, if you are ready and 
willing to pay this price, fear that you may be unable to get 
on for want of special talent. It is indeed true that the per- 
sons who have peculiar talent for art, draw instinctively and 
eet on almost without teaching ; though never without toil. 
It is true, also, that of inferior talent for drawing there are 
many degrees; it will take one person a much longer time 
than another to attain the same results, and the results thus 
painfully attained are never quite so satisfactory as those got 
with greater ease when the faculties are naturally adapted to 
the study. But I have never yet, in the experiments I have 
made, met with a person who could not learn to draw at all; 





UN FIRST PRACTICE. 235 


and, in general, there is a satisfactory and available power in 
every one to learn drawing if he wishes, just as nearly all per- 
sons have the power of learning French, Latin, or arithmetic, 
in a decent and useful degree, if their lot in life requires them 
to possess such knowledge. 

Supposing then that you are ready to take a certain amount 
of pains, and to bear a little irksomeness and a few disappoint- 
ments bravely, I can promise you that an hour’s practice a day 
for six months, or an hour’s practice every other day for 
twelve months, or, disposed in whatever way you find conve- 
nient, some hundred and fifty hours’ practice, will give you 
sufficient power of drawing faithfully whatever you want to 
draw, and a good judgment, up to a certain point, of other 
people’s work: of which hours, if you have one to spare at 
present, we may as well begin at once. 


EXERCISE I. 


Everyrutne that you can see, in the world around you, pre- 
sents itself to your eyes only as an arrangement of patches of 
different colours variously shaded.* Some of these patches of 


* (N. B. This note is only for the satisfaction of incredulous or curious 
readers. You may miss it if you are in a hurry, or are willing to take 
the statement in the text on trust.) 

The perception of solid Form is entirely a matter of experience. We 
see nothing but flat colours; and it is only by a series of experiments 
that we find out that a stain of black or grey indicates the dark side of 
a solid substance, or that a faint hue indicates that the object in which 
it appears is far away. The whole technical power of painting depends 
on our recovery of what may be called the dnocence of the eye; that is 
to say, a sort of childish perception of these flat stains of colour, merely 
as such, without consciousness of what they signify, as a blind man 
would see them if suddenly gifted with sight. 

For instance; when grass is lighted strongly by the sun in certain 
directions, it is turned from green into a peculiar and somewhat dusty- 
looking yellow. If we had been born blind, and were suddenly en- 
dowed with sight on a piece of grass thus lighted in some parts by the 
sun, it would appear to us that part of the grass was green, and part 
a dusty yellow (very nearly of the colour of primroses); and, if there 
were primroses near, we should think that the sunlighted grass was an- 
other mass o° plants of the same sulphur-yellow colour. We should try 


236 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


colour have an appearance of lines or texture within them, as 
a piece of cloth or slik has of threads, or an animal’s skin 
shows texture of hairs ; but whether this be the case or not, 
the first broad aspect of the thing is that of a patch of some 
definite colour ; and the first thing to be learned is, how to 
produce extents of smooth colour, without texture. 

This can only be done properly with a brush ; but a brush, 
being soft at the point, causes so much uncertainty in the 
touch of an unpractised hand, that it is hardly possible to 
learn to draw first with it, and it is better to take, in early 
practice, some instrument with a hard and fine point, both 
that we may give some support to the hand, and that by work- 
ing over the subject with so delicate a point, the attention may 
be properly directed to all the most minute parts of it. Even 


to gather some of them, and then find that the.colour went away from 
the grass when we stood between it and the sun, but not from the prim- 
roses; and by a series of experiments we should find out that the sun 
was really the cause of the colour in the one,—not in the other. We 
go through such processes of experiment unconsciously in childhood ; 
and having once come to conclusions touching the signification of certain 
colours, we always suppose that we sce what we only know, and have 
hardly any consciousness of the real aspect of the signs we have learned 
to interpret. Very few people have any idea that sunlighted grass is 
yellow. 

Now, a highly accomplished artist has always reduced himself as 
nearly as possible to this condition of infantine sight. He sees the col- 
ours of nature exactly as they are, and therefore perceives at once in 
the sunlighted grass the precise relation between the two colours that 
form its shade and light. To him it does not seem shade and light, but 
bluish green barred with gold. 

Strive, therefore, first of all, to convince yourself of this great fact 
about sight. This, in your hand, which you know by experience and 
touch to be a book, is to your eye nothing but a patch of white, vari- 
ously gradated and spotted; this other thing near you, which by expe- 
rience you know to be a table, is to your eye only a patch of brown, 
variously darkened and veined; and so on: and the whole art of Paint- 
ing consists merely in perceiving the shape and depth of these patches 
of colour, and putting patches of the same size, depth, and shape on can- 
vas. The only obstacle to the success of painting is, that many of the 
real colours are brighter and paler than it is possible to put on canvas: 
we must put darker ones to represent them. 


ON FIRST PRACTICE. 237 


the best artists need occasionally to study subjects with a 
pointed instrument, in order thus to discipline their atten- 
tion : and a beginner must be content to do so fora consider- 
able period. 

Also, observe that before we trouble ourselves about differ- 
ences of colour, we must be able to lay on one colour properly, 
in whatever gradations of depth and whatever shapes we want. 
We will try, therefore, first to lay on tints or patches of grey, 
of whatever depth we want, with a pointed instrument. 
Take any finely-pointed steel pen (one of Gillott’s lithographic 
crow-quills is best), and a piece of quite smooth, but not shin- 
ing, note-paper, cream-laid, and get some ink that has stood 
already some time in the inkstand, so as to be quite black, and 
as thick as it can be without clogging the pen. ‘Take a rule, 
and draw four straight lines, so as to enclose a square or 
nearly a square, about as large as a, Fig. 1. I say nearly a 
square, because it does not in the least matter whether it is 
quite square or not, the object being merely to get a space 
enclosed by straight lines. 





Fra. 1. 


Now, try to fillin that square space with crossed lines, so 
completely and evenly that it shall look like a square patch of 
grey silk or cloth, cut out and laid on the white paper, as at b. 
Cover it quickly, first with straightish lines, in any direction 
you like, not troubling yourself to draw them much closer or 
neater than those in the square a. Let them quite dry before 
retouching them. (If you draw three or four squares side by 
side, you may always be going on with one while the others 
are drying). Then cover these lines with others in a different 
direction, and let those dry ; then in another direction still, 
and let those dry. Always wait long enough to run no risk 
of blotting, and then draw the lines as quickly as you can. 


238 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


Each ought to be laid on as swiftly as the dash of the pen of a 
good writer ; but if you try to reach this great speed at first 
you will go over the edge of the square, which is a fault in 
this exercise. Yet itis better to do so now and then than to 
draw the lines very slowly ; for if you do, the pen leaves a lit- 
tle dot of ink at the end of each line, and these dots spoil 
your work. So draw each line quickly, stopping always as 
nearly as you can at the edge of the square. The ends of lines 
which go over the edge are afterwards to be removed with the 
penknife, but not till you have done the whole work, other- 
wise you roughen the paper, and the next line that goes over 
the edge makes a blot. 

When you have gone over the whole three or four times, 
you will find some parts of the square look darker than other 
parts. Now try to make the lighter parts as dark as the rest, 
so that the whole may be of equal depth or darkness. You 
will find, on examining the work, that where it looks darkest 
- the lines are closest, or there are some much darker lines, 
than elsewhere ; therefore you must put in other lines, or 
little scratches and dots, between the lines in the paler parts ; 
and where there are very conspicuous dark lines, scratch them 
out lightly with the penknife, for the eye must not be attracted 
by any line in particular. The more carefully and delicately 
you fill in the little gaps and holes the better ; you will get on 
faster by doing two or three squares perfectly than a great 
many badly. As the tint gets closer and begins to look even, 
work with very little ink in your pen, so as hardly to make 
any mark on the paper ; and at last, where it is too dark, use 
the edge of your penknife very lightly, and for some time, to 
wear it softly into an even tone. You will find that the great- 
est difficulty consists in getting evenness: one bit will always 
look darker than another bit of your square ; or there will be 
a granulated and sandy look over the whole. When you find 
your paper quite rough and in a mess, give if up and begin 
another square, but do not rest satisfied till you have done 
your best with every square. The tint at last ought af least 
to be as close and even as that in 6, Fig. 1. You will find, 
however, that it is very difficult to get a pale tint; because, 


ON FIRST PRACTICE. 239 


naturally, the ink lines necessary to produce a close tint at all, 
blacken the paper more than you want. You must get over 
this difficulty not so much by leaving the lines wide apart as 
by trying to draw them excessively fine, lightly and swiftly ; 
being very cautious in filling in; and, at last, passing the pen- 
knife over the whole. By keeping several squares in progress 
at one time, and reserving your pen for the light one just 
when the ink is nearly exhausted, you may get on better. 
The paper ought, at last, to look lightly and evenly toned all 
over, with no lines distinctly visible. 


EXERCISE II. 


As this exercise in shading is very tiresome, it will be well 
to vary it by proceeding with another at the same time. The 
power of shading rightly depends mainly on lightness of hand 
and keenness of sight ; but there are other qualities required 
in drawing, dependent not merely on lightness, but steadiness 
of hand ; and the eye, to be perfect in its power, must be 
made accurate as well as keen, and not only see shrewdly, but 
measure justly. 

Possess yourself, therefore, of any cheap work on botany 
containing outline plates of leaves and flowers, it does not 
matter whether bad or good: “ Baxter’s British Flowering 
Plants” is quite good enough. Copy any of the simplest out- 
lines, first with a soft pencil, following it, by the eye, as nearly 
as you can; if it does not look right in proportions, rub out 
and correct it, always by the eye, till you think it is right: 
when you have got it to your mind, lay tracing-paper on the 
book, on this paper trace the outline you have been copying, 
and apply it to your own; and having thus ascertained the 
faults, correct them all patiently, till you have got it as nearly 
eccurate as may be. Work with a very soft pencil, and do not 
rub out so hard * as to spoil the surface of your paper ; never 


* Stale crumb of bread is better,if you are making a delicate drawing, 
than India-rubber, for it disturbs the surface of the paper less: but it 
crumbles about the room and makes a@ megs; and, besides, you waste 
the good bread, which is wrong; and your drawing will not for a long 


240 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


mind how dirty the paper gets, but do not roughen it; and 
let the false outlines alone where they do not really interfere 
with the true one. It is a good thing to accustom yourself to 
hew and shape your drawing out of a dirty piece of paper. 
When you have got it as right as you can, take a quill pen, 
not very fine at the point ; rest your hand on a book about an 
inch and a half thick, so as to hold the pen long; and go over 
your pencil outline with ink, raising your pen point as seldom 
as possible, and never leaning more heavily on one part of 
the line than on another. In most outline drawings of the 
present day, parts of the curves are thickened to give an effect 
of shade ; all such outlines are bad, but they will serve well 
enough for your exercises, provided you do not imitate this 
character : it is better, however, if you can, to choose a 
book of pure outlines. It does not in the least matter 
whether your pen outline be thin or thick; but it matters 
ereatly that it should be equal, not heavier in one place than 
in another. The power to be obtained is that of drawing an 
even line slowly and in any direction ; all dashing lines, or 
approximations to penmanship, are bad. ‘The pen should, as 
it were, walk slowly over the ground, and you should be able 
at any moment to stop it, or to turn it in any other direction, 
like a well-managed horse. 

As soon as you can copy every curve slowly and accurately, 
you have made satisfactory progress; but you will find the 
difficulty is in the slowness. It is easy to draw what appears 
to be a good line with a sweep of the hand, or with what is 
called freedom ;* the real difficulty and masterliness is in 


while be worth the crumbs. So use India-rubber very lightly ; or, if 
heavily pressing it only, not passing it over the paper, and leave what 
pencil marks that will not come away so, without minding them. In a 
finished drawing the uneffaced penciling is often serviceable, helping 
the general tone, and enabling you to take out little bright lights. 

* What is usually so much sought after under the term ‘‘ freedom” is 
the character of the drawing of a great master in a hurry, whose hand 
is so thoroughly disziplined, that when pressed for time he can let it fly 
as it will, and it will not go far wrong. But the hand of a great master 
at real awork is never free: itsswiftest dash isunder perfect government. 
Paul Veronese or Tintoret could pause within a hairs breadth of any 


ON FIRST PRACTICE. 241 


never letting the hand be free, but keeping it under entire 
control at every part of the line. 


EXERCISE III. 


Meantime, you are always to be going on with your shaded 
squares, and chiefly with these, the outline exercises being 
taken up only for rest. 

» As soon as you find you have some command of the pen as 
a shading instrument, and can lay a pale or dark tint as you 
choose, try to produce gradated spaces like Vig. 2., the dark 





Fig: 2. 


tint passing gradually into the lighter ones. Nearly ail ex- 
pression of form, in drawing, depends on your power of gra- 
dating delicately ; and the gradation is always most skilful 
which passes from one tint into another very little paler. Draw, 
therefore, two parallel lines for limits to your work, as in Fig. 
2., and try to gradate the shade evenly from white to black, 
passing over the greatest possible distance, yet so that every 


appointed mark, in their fastest touches; and follow, within a hair’s 
breadth, the previously intended curve. You must never, therefore, 
aim at freedom. It is not required of your drawing that it should be 
free, but that it should be 77ght: in time you will be able to do right 
easily, and then your work will be free in the best sense ; but there is 
no merit in doing wrong easily. 

These remarks, however, do not apply to the lines used in shading, 
which, it will be remembered, are to be made as gwickly as possible. 
The reason of this is, that the quicker a line is drawn, the lighter it is 
at the ends, and therefore the more easily joined with other lines, and 
concealed by them ; the object in perfect shading being to conceal the 
lines as much as possible. 

And observe, in this exercise, the object is more to get firmness of 
hand than accuracy of eye for outline ; for there are no outlines in Nat- 
ure, and the ordinary student is sure to draw them falsely if he draws 
them at all. Do not, therefore, be discouraged if you find mistakes 
continue to occur in your outlines; be content at present if you find your 
hand gaining command over the curves. 


242 THE BELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


part of the band may have visible change in it. The percep. 
tion of gradation is very deficient in all beginners (not to say, 
in many artists), and you will probably, for some time, think 
your gradation skilful enough when it is quite patchy and im- 
perfect. By getting a piece of grey shaded riband, and com- 
paring it with your drawing, you may arrive, in early stages 
of your work, at a wholesome dissatisfaction with it. Widen 
your band little by little as you get more skilful, so as to give 
the gradation more lateral space, and accustom yourself at the 
same time to look for gradated spaces in Nature. The sky is 
the largest and the most beautiful; watch it at twilight, after 
the sun is down, and try to consider each pane of glass in the 
window you look through as a piece of paper coloured blue, 
or grey, or purple, as it happens to be, and observe how quietly 
and continuously the gradation extends over the space in the 
window, of one or two feet square. Observe the shades on 
the outside and inside of a common white cup or bowl, which 
make it look round and hollow ;* and then on folds of white 
drapery ; and thus gradually you will be led to observe -the 
more subtle transitions of the light as it increases or declines 
on flat surfaces. At last, when your eye gets keen and true, 
you will see gradation on everything in Nature. 

But it will not be in your power yet awhile to draw from 
any objects in which the gradations are varied and compli- 
cated ; nor will it be a bad omen for your future progress, and 
for the use that art is to be made of by you, if the first thing 
at which you aim should be a little bit of sky. So take any 
narrow space of evening sky, that you can usually see, between 
the boughs of a tree, or between two chimneys, or through 
the corner of a pane in the window you like best to sit at, and 
try to gradate a little space of white paper as evenly as that 
is gradated—as tenderly you cannot gradate it without colour, 
no, nor with colour either ; but you may do it as evenly; or, 
if you get impatient with your spots and lines of ink, when 
you look at the beauty of the sky, the sense you will have 
gained of that beauty is something to be thankful for. But 


* If you can get any pieces of dead white porcelain, not glazed, they 
will be useful models, 


ON FIRST PRACTICE. 243 


you ought not to be impatient with your pen and ink; for all 
great painters, however delicate their perception of colour, are 
fond of the peculiar effect of light which may be got in a pen- 
and-ink sketch, and in a woodcut, by the gleaming of the white 
paper between the black lines; and if you cannot gradate well 
with pure black lines, you will never gradate well with pale 
ones. By looking at any common woodcuts, in the cheap 
publications of the day, you may see how gradation is given 
to the sky by leaving the lines farther and farther apart; but 
you must make your lines as jine as you can, as well as far 
apart, towards the light; and do not try to make them long 
or straight, but let them cross irregularly in any direction easy 
to your hand, depending on nothing but their gradation for 
your effect. On this point of direction of lines, however, I 
shall have to tell you more presently ; in the meantime, do not 
trouble yourself about it. 


EXERCISE IY. 


As soon as you find you can gradate tolerably with the pen, 
take an H. or HH. pencil, using its point to produce shade, 
from the darkest possible to the palest, in exactly the same 
manner as the pen, lightening, however, now with India-rubber 
instead of the penknife. You will find that all pale tints of 
shade are thus easily producible with great precision and ten- 
derness, but that you cannot get the same dark power as with 
the pen and ink, and that the surface of the shade is apt to 
become glossy and metallic, or dirty-looking, or sandy. Perse- 
vere, however, in trying to bring it to evenness with the fine 
point, removing any single speck or line that may be too black, 
with the point of the knife: you must not scratch the whole 
with the knife as you do the ink. If you find the texture very 
speckled-looking, lighten it all over with India-rubber, and 
recover it again with sharp, and excessively fine touches of the 
pencil point, bringing the parts that are too pale to perfect 
evenness with the darker spots. 

You cannot use the point too delicately or cunningly in 
doing this; work with it as if you were drawing the down on 
a butterfly’s wing. 


244 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


At this stage of your progress, if not before, you may be 
assured that some clever friend will come in, and hold up his 
hands in mocking amazement, and ask you who could set you 
to that “nigeling ;” and if you persevere in it, you will have to 
sustain considerable persecution from your artistical acquaint- 
ances generally, who will tell you that all good drawing de- 
pends on “boldness.” But never mind them. You do not 
hear them tell a child, beginning music, to lay its little hand 
with a crash among the keys, in imitation of the great mas- 
ters ; yet they might, as reasonably as they may tell you to be 
bold in the present state of your knowledge. Bold, in the 
sense of being undaunted, yes ; but bold in the sense of being 
careless, confident, or exhibitory,— no,— no, and a thousand 
times no; for, even if you were not a beginner, it would be 
bad advice that made you bold. Mischief may easily be done 
quickly, but good and beautiful work is generally done slowly; 
you will find no boldness in the way a flower or a bird’s wing 
is painted; and if Nature is not bold at her work, do you 
think you ought to be at yours? So never mind what people 
say, but work with your pencil point very patiently ; and if 
you can trust me in anything, trust me when I tell you, that 
though there are all kinds and ways of art,—large work for 
large places, small work for narrow places, slow work for 
people who can wait, and quick work for people who cannot, 
—there is one quality, and, I think, only one, in which all 
ereat and good art agrees ;—it is all delicate art. Coarse art 
is always bad art. You cannot understand this at present, 
because you do not know yet how much tender thought, and 
subtle care, the great painters put into touches that at first 
look coarse ; but, believe me, it is true, and you will find it 
is so in due time. 

You will be perhaps also troubled, in these first essays at 
pencil drawing, by noticing that more delicate gradations 
are got in an instant by a chance touch of the India-rubber, 
than by an hour’s labour with the point; and you may won- 
der why I tell you to produce tints so painfully, which might, 
it appears, be obtained with ease. But there are two reasons: 
the first, that when you come to draw forms, you must be 


ON FIRST PRACTICE. 245 


able to gradate with absolute precision, in whatever place and 
direction you wish ; not in any wise vaguely, as the India-rub- 
ber does it ; and, secondly, that all natural shadows are more 
or less mingled with gleams of light. In the darkness of 
ground there is the light of the little pebbles or dust ; in the 
darkness of foliage, the glitter of the leaves ; in the darkness 
of flesh, transparency; in that of a stone, granulation: in 
every case there is some mingling of light, which cannot be 
represented by the leaden tone which you get by rubbing, or 
by an instrument known to artists as the “stump.” When 
you can manage the point properly, you will indeed be able 
to do much also with this instrument, or with your fingers ; 
but then you will have to retouch the flat tints afterwards, so 
as to put life and light into them, and that can only be done 
with the point. Labour on, therefore, courageously, with that 
only. 
EXERCISE V. 


WHEN you can manage to tint and gradate tenderly with 
the pencil point, get a good large alphabet, and try to tint the 
letters into shape with the pencil point. Do not outline them 
first, but measure their height and extreme breadth with the 





compasses, as a b, a c, Fig. 3., and then scratch in their shapes 
eradually ; the letter A, enclosed within the lines, being in 
what Turner would have called a “state of forwardness.” 
Then, when you are satisfied with the shape of the letter, 
draw pen and ink lines firmly round the tint, as at d, and re- 


246 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


move any touches outside the limit, first with the India-rub- 
ber, and then with the penknife, so that all may look clear and 
right. If you rub out any of the pencil inside the outline of 
the letter, retouch it, closing it up to the inked line. The 
straight lines of the outline are all to be ruled,* but the curved 
lines are to be drawn by the eye and hand ; and you will soon 
find what good practice there is in getting the curved letters, 
such as Bs, Cs, &e., to stand quite straight, and come into 
accurate form. 

All these exercises are very irksome, and they are not to be 
persisted in alone; neither is it necessary to acquire perfect 
power in any of them. An entire master of the pencil or 
brush ought, indeed, to be able to draw any form at once, as 
Giotto his circle ; but such skill as this is only to be expected 
of the consummate master, having pencil in hand all his life, 
and all day long, hence the force of Giotto’s proof of his skill ; 
and it is quite possible to draw very beautifully, without at- 
taining even an approximation to such a power; the main 
point being, not that every line should be precisely what we 
intend or wish, but that the line which we intended or wished 
to draw should be right. If we always see rightly and mean 
rightly, we shall get on, though the hand may stagger a little ; 
but if we mean wrongly, or mean nothing, it does not matter 
how firm the hand is. Do not, therefore, torment yourself 
because you cannot do as well as you would like ; but work 
patiently, sure that every square and letter will give youa 
certain increase of power; and as soon as you can draw your 
letters pretty well, here is a more amusing exercise for you. 


* Artists who glance at this book may be surprised at this permission. 
My chief reason is, that I think it more necessary that the pupil’s eye 
should be trained to accurate perception of the relations of curve and 
right lines, by having the latter absolutely true, than that he should 
practice drawing straight lines. But also, 1 believe, though I am not 
quite sure of this, that he never ought to be able to draw a straight line. 
I do not believe a perfectly trained hand ever can draw a line without 
some curvature in it, or some variety of direction. Prout could draw 
a straight line, but I do not believe Raphael could, nor Tintoret. A 
great draughtsman can, as far as I have observed, draw every line but a 
straight one. 


ON FIRST’ PRACTICE. 247 


EXERCISE: VI. 


Cxooss any tree that you think pretty, which is nearly bare 
of leaves, and which you can see against the sky, or against a 
pale wall, or other light ground: it must not be against strong 
light, or you will find the looking at it hurts your eyes; nor 
must it bein sunshine, or you will be puzzled by the lights on 
the boughs. But the tree must be in shade; and the sky 
blue, or grey, or dull white. A wholly grey or rainy day is 
the best for this practice. 

You will see that ail the boughs of the tree are dark against 
the sky. Consider them as so many dark rivers, to be laid 
down in a map with absolute accuracy ; and, without the least 
thought about the roundness of the stems, map them all out 
in flat shade, scrawling them in with pencil, just as you did 
the limbs of your letters; then correct and alter them, rub- 
bing out and out again, never minding how much your paper 
is dirtied (only not destroying its surface), until every bough 
is exactly, or as near as your utmost power can bring it, right 
in curvature and in thickness. Look at the white interstices 
between them with as much scrupulousness as if they were 
little estates which you had to survey, and draw maps of, for 
some important lawsuit, involving heavy penalties if you cut 
the least bit of a corner off any of them, or gave the hedge 
anywhere too deep a curve ; and try continually to fancy the 
whole tree nothing but a flat ramification on a white ground. 
Do not take any trouble about the little twigs, which look like 
a confused network or mist; leave them all out,* drawing 
only the main branches as far as you can see them distinctly, 
your object at present being not to draw a tree, but to learn 
how to do so. When you have got the thing as nearly right 
as you can—and it is better to make one good study than 
twenty left unnecessarily inaccurate—take your pen, and puta 
fine outline to all the boughs, as you did to your letter, taking 


* Or, if you feel able to do so, scratch them in with confused quick 
touches, indicating the general shape of the cloud or mist of twigs 
round the main brauches; but do not take much trouble about them. 


248 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


care, as far as possible, to put the outline within the edge of 
the shade, so as not to make the boughs thicker: the main 
use of the outline is to affirm the whole more clearly ; to do 
away with little accidental roughnesses and excrescences, and 
especially to mark where boughs cross, or come in front of 
each other, as at such points their arrangement in this kind 
of sketch is unintelligible without the outline. It may per- 
fectly well happen that in Nature it should be less distinct 





Fic. 4. 


than your outline will make it; but it is better in this kind of 
sketch to mark the facts clearly. The temptation is always to 
be slovenly and careless, and the outline is like a bridle, and 
forces our indolence into attention and precision. The out- 
line should be about the thickness of that in Fig. 4, which 
represents the ramification of a small stone pine, only I have 
not endeavoured ,to represent the pencil shading within the 
outline, as I could not easily express it in a woodcut; and you 
have nothing to do at present with the indication of the foli- 
age above, of which in another place. You may also draw 


ON FIRST PRACTICE. 249 


your trees as much larger than this figure as you like ; only, 
however large they may be, keep the outline as delicate, and 
draw the branches far enough into their outer sprays to give 
quite as slender ramification as you have in this figure, other- 
wise you do not get good enough practice out of them. 

You cannot do too many studies of this kind: every one 
will give you some new notion about trees: but when you 
are tired of tree boughs, take any forms whatever which are 
drawn in flat colour, one upon another; as patterns on any 
kind of cloth, or flat china (tiles, for instance), executed in 
two colours only; and practice drawing them of the right 
shape and size by the eye, and filling them in with shade of 
the depth required. 

In doing this, you will first have to meet the difficulty of 
representing depth of colour by depth of shade. Thus a pat- 
tern of ultramarine blue will have to be represented by a 
darker tint of grey than a pattern of yellow. 

And now it is both time for you to begin to learn the me- 
chanical use of the brush, and necessary for you to do so in 
order to provide yourself with the gradated scale of colour 
which you will want. If you can, by any means, get acquainted 
with any ordinarily skilful water-colour painter, and prevail 
on him to show you how to lay on tints with a brush, by all 
means do so; not that you are yet, nor for a long while yet, 
to begin to colour, but because the brush is often more con- | 
venient than the pencil for laying on masses or tints of shade, 
and the sooner you know how to manage it as an instrument 
the better. If, however, you have no opportunity of seeing 
how water-colour is laid on by a workman of any kind, the 
following directions will help you :— 


EXERCISE VII. 


Ger a shilling cake of Prussian blue. Dip the end of it in 
water so as to take up a drop, and rub it in a white saucer 
till you cannot rub much more, and the colour gets dark, 
thick, and oily-looking. Put two teaspoonfuls of water to the 
colour you have rubbed down, and mix it well up with a 
camel’s-hair brush about three quarters of an inch long. 


250 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


Then take a piece of smooth, but not glossy, Bristol board 
or pasteboard ; divide it, with your pencil and rule, into 
squares as large as those of the very largest chess-board : they 
need not be perfect squares, only as nearly so as you can 
quickly guess. Rest the pasteboard on something sloping as 
much as an ordinary desk ; then, dipping your brush into the 
colour you have mixed, and taking up as much of the liquid 
as it will carry, begin at the top of one of the squares, and 
lay a pond or runlet of colour along the top edge. Lead this 
pond of colour gradually downwards, not faster at one place 
than another, but as if you were adding a row of bricks to a 
building, all along (only building down instead of up), dip- 
ping the brush frequently so as to keep the colour as full in 
that, and in as great quantity on the paper, as you can, so 
only that it does not run down anywhere in a little stream. 
But if it should, never mind ; go on quietly with your square 
till you have covered it allin. When you get to the bottom, 
the colour will lodge there in a great wave. Have ready a 
piece of blotting-paper ; dry your brush on it, and with the 
dry brush take up the superfluous colour as you would witha 
sponge, till it all looks even. 

In leading the colour down, you will find your brush con- 
tinually go over the edge of the square, or leave little gaps 
within it. Do not endeavour to retouch these, nor take much 
care about them ; the great thing is to get the colour to lie 
smoothly where it reaches, not in alternate blots and pale 
patches ; try, therefore, to lead it over the square as fast as 
possible, with such attention to your limit as you are able to 
give. The use of the exercise is, indeed, to enable you finally 
to strike the colour up to the limit with perfect accuracy ; but 
the first thing is to get it even, the power of rightly striking 
the edge comes only by time and practice ; even the greatest 
artists rarely can do this quite perfectly. 

When you have done one square, proceed to do another 
which does not communicate with it. When you have thus 
done all the alternate. squares, as on a chess-board, turn the 
pasteboard upside down, begin again with the first, and put 
another coat over it, and so on over all the others. The use 


ON FIRST PRACTICE. 251 


of turning the paper upside down is to neutralise the increase 
of darkness towards the bottom of the squares, which would 
otherwise take place from the ponding of the colour. 

Be resolved to use blotting-paper, or a piece of rag, instead 
of your lips, to dry the brush. The habit of doing so, once 
acquired, will save you from much partial poisoning. Take 
care, however, always to draw the brush from root to point, 
otherwise you will spoil it. You may even wipe it as you 
would a pen when you want it very dry, without doing harm, 
provided you do not crush it upwards. Get a good brush at 
first, and cherish it ; it will serve you longer and better than 
many bad ones. 

When you have done the squares all over again, do them a 
third time, always trying to keep your edges as neat as possi- 
ble. When your colour is exhausted, mix more in the same 
proportions, two teaspoonfuls to as much as you can grind 
with a drop; and when you have done the alternate squares 
three times over, as the paper will be getting very damp, and 
dry more slowly, begin on the white squares, and bring them 
up to the same tint in the same way. The amount of jagged 
dark line which then will mark the limits of the squares will 
be the exact measure of your unskilfulness. 

As soon as you tire of squares draw circles (with com- 
passes) ; and then draw straight lines irregularly across cir- 
cles, and fill up the spaces so produced between the straight 
line and the circumference ; and then draw any simple shapes 
of leaves, according to the exercise No. 2., and fill up those, 
until you can lay on colour quite evenly in any shape you 
want. 

You will find in the course of this practice, as you cannot 
always put exactly the same quantity of water to the colour, 
that the darker the colour is, the more difficult it becomes 
to lay it on evenly. Therefore, when you have gained some 
definite degree of power, try to fill in the forms required with 
a full brush, and a dark tint, at once, instead of laying several 
coats one over another; always taking care that the tint, how- 
ever dark, be quite liquid ; and that, after being laid on, so 
much of it is absorbed as to prevent its forming a black line 


252 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


at the edge as it dries. A little experience will teach you how 
apt the colour is to do this, and how to prevent it ; not that it 
needs always to be prevented, for a great master in water- 
colours will sometimes draw a firm outline, when he wanis 
one, simply by letting the colour dry in this way at the 
edge. 

When, however, you begin to cover complicated forms with 
the darker colour, no rapidity will prevent the tint from dry- 
ing irregularly as it is led on from part to part. You will then- 
find the following method useful. Lay in the colour very 
pale and liquid ; so pale, indeed, that you can only just see 
where it is on the paper. Lead it up to all the outlines, and 
make it precise in form, keeping it thoroughly wet every- 
where. ‘Then, when it is all in shape, take the darker colour, 
and lay some of it into the middle of the liquid colour. It will 
spread gradually in a branchy kind of way, and you may now 
lead it up to the outlines already determined, and play it with 
the brush till it fills its place well ; then let it dry, and it will 
be as flat and pure as a single dash, yet defining all the com- 
plicated forms accurately. 

Having thus obtained the power of laying on a tolerabiy 
flat tint, you must try to lay on a gradated one. Prepare the 
colour with three or four teaspoonfuls of water ; then, when it 
is mixed, pour away about two-thirds of it, keeping a teaspoon- 
ful of pale colour. Sloping your paper as before, draw two 
pencil lines all the way down, leaving a space between them of 
the width of a square on your chess-board. Begin at the top 
of your paper, between the lines; and having struck on the 
first brushful of colour, and led it down a little, dip your 
brush deep in water, and mix up the colour on the plate 
quickly with as much more water as the brush takes up at 
that one dip: then, with this paler colour, lead the tint 
farther down. Dip in water again, mix the colour again, and 
thus lead down the tint, always dipping in water once between 
each replenishing of the brush, and stirring the colour on the 
plate well, but as quickly as you can. Go on until the colour 
has become so pale that you cannot see it ; then wash your 
brush thoroughly in water, and carry the wave down a little 


ON FIRST PRACTICE. 253 


farther with that, and then absorb it with the dry brush, and 
leave it to dry. 

If you get to the bottom of your paper before your colour 
gets pale, you may either take longer paper, or begin, with 
the tint as it was when you left off, on another sheet ; but be 
sure to exhaust it to pure whiteness at last. When all is 
quite dry, recommence at the top with another similar mixt- 
ure of colour, and go down in the same way. Then again, 
and then again, and so continually until the colour at the top 
of the paper is as dark as your cake of Prussian blue, and 
passes down into pure white paper at the end of your column, 
with a perfectly smooth gradation from one into the other. 

You will find at first that the paper gets mottled or wavy, 
instead of evenly gradated ; this is because at some places you 
have taken up more water in your brush than at others, or 
not mixed it thoroughly on the plate, or led one tint too far 
before replenishing with the next. Practice only will enable 
you to do it well; the best artists cannot always get grada- 
tions of this kind quite to their minds; nor do they ever leave 
them on their pictures without after touching. 

As you get more power, and can strike the colour more 
quickly down, you will be able to gradate in less compass ; * 
_ beginning with a small quantity of colour, and adding a drop 
of water, instead of a brushful ; with finer brushes, also, you 
may gradate to a less scale. But slight skill will enable you 
to test the relations of colour to shade as far as is necessary 
for your immediate progress, which is to be done thus :— 

Take cakes of lake, of gamboge, of sepia, of blue-black, of 
cobalt, and vermilion ; and prepare gradated columns (exactly 
as you have done with the Prussian blue) of the lake and 
blue-black.+ Cut a narrow slip all the way down, of each gra-. 
dated colour, and set the three slips side by side; fasten them 
down, and rule lines at equal distances across all the three, so 
as to divide them into fifty degrees, and number the degrees 


*Tt is more difficult, at first, to get, in colour, a narrow gradation than 
an extended one ; but the ultimate difficulty is, as with the pen, to make 
the gradation go far. 

t Of course, all the columns of colour are to be of equal length. 


254 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


of each, from light to dark, 1, 2, 3, &e. If you have gradated 
them rightly, the darkest part either of the red or blue will 
be nearly equal in power to the darkest part of the blue-black, 
and any degree of the black slip will also, accurately enough 
for our purpose, balance in weight the degree similarly num- 
bered in the red or the blue slip. Then, when you are draw- 
ing from objects of a crimson or blue colour, if you can match 
their colour by any compartment of the crimson or blue in 
your scales, the grey in the compartment of the grey scale 
marked with the same number is the grey which must repre- 
sent that crimson or blue in your light and shade drawing. 
Next, prepare scales with gamboge, cobalt, and vermilion. 
You will find that you cannot darken these beyond a certain 
point ; * for yellow and scarlet, so long as they remain yellow 
and scarlet, cannot approach to black ; we cannot have, prop- 
erly speaking, a dark yellow or dark scarlet. Make your 
scales of full yellow, blue, and scarlet, half-way down ; pass- 
ing then gradually to white. Afterwards use lake to darken 
the upper half of the vermilion and gamboge; and Prussian 
blue to darken the cobalt. You will thus have three more 
scales, passing from white nearly to black, through yellow and 
orange, through sky-blue, and through scarlet. By mixing 
the gamboge and Prussian blue you may make another with 
green ; mixing the cobalt and lake, another with violet ; the 
sepia alone will make a forcible brown one ; and so on, until 
you have as many.scales as you like, passing from black to 
white through different colours. Then, supposing your scales 
properly gradated and equally divided, the compartment or 
degree No. 1. of the grey will represent in chiaroscuro the 
No. 1. of all the other colours; No. 2. of grey the No. 2. of 
the other colours, and so on. 
It is only necessary, however, in this matter that you should 
understand the principle ; for it would never be possible for 
you to gradate your scales so truly as to make them prac- 
tically accurate and serviceable ; and even if you could, unless 
you had about ten thousand scales, and were able to change 


* The degree of darkness you can reach with the given colour is ak 
ways indicated by the colour of the solid cake in the box, 


ON FIRST PRACTICE. 255 


them faster than ever juggler changed cards, you could not 
in a day measure the tints on so much as one side of a frost- 
bitten apple: but when once you fully understand the 
principle, and see how all colours contain as it were a certain 
quantity of darkness, or power of dark relief from white— 
some more, some less; and how this pitch or power of each 
may be represented by equivalent values of grey, you will 
soon be able to arrive shrewdly at an approximation by a 
glance of the eye, without any measuring scale at all. 

You must now go on, again with the pen, drawing patterns, 
and any shapes of shade that you think pretty, as veinings in 
marble, or tortoiseshell, spots in surfaces of shells, &c., as 
tenderly as you can, in the darknesses that correspond to 
their colours; and when you find you can do this success- 
fully, it is time to begin rounding. 


EXERCISE VIII. 


Go out into your garden, or into the road, and pick up the 
first round or oval stone you can find, not very white, nor 
very dark ; and the smoother it is the better, only it must not. 
shine. Draw your table near the window, and put the stone, 
which I will suppose is about the size of ain Fig. 5. (it had 
better not be much larger), on a piece of not very white 
paper, on the table in front of you. Sit so that the light may 
come from your left, else the shadow of the pencil point in- 
terferes with your sight of your work. You must not let 
the sun fall on the stone, but only ordinary light: therefore 
choose a window which the sun does not come in at. If you 
can shut the shutters of the other windows in the room it will 
be all the better ; but this is not of much consequence. 

Now, if you can draw that stone, you can draw anything: 
I mean, anything that is drawable. Many things (sea foam, 
for instance) cannot be drawn at all, only the idea of them 
more or less suggested ; but if you can draw the stone 
rightly, every thing within reach of art is also within yours. 

For all drawing depends, primarily, on your power of rep- 
resenting Roundness. If you can once do that, all the rest is 
easy and straightforward ; if you cannot do that, nothing 


256 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


else that you may be able to do will be of any use. For 
Nature is all made up of roundnesses ; not the roundness of 
perfect globes, but of variously curved surfaces. Boughs are — 
rounded, leaves are rounded, stones are rounded, clouds are 
rounded, cheeks are rounded, and curls are rounded: there 
is no more flatness in the natural world than there is vacancy. 
The world itself is round, and so is all that is in it, more or 
less, except human work, which is often very flat indeed. 

Therefore, set yourself steadily to conquer that round 
stone, and you have won the battle. 

Look your stone antagonist boldly in the face. You will 
see that the side of it next the window is lighter than most of 
the paper: that the side of it farthest from the window is 
darker than the paper; and that the light passes into the 
dark gradually, while a shadow is thrown to the right on the 
paper itself by the ‘stone: the general appearance of things 
being more or less as ina, Fig. 5., the spots on the stone 
excepted, of which more presently. 

Now, remember always what was stated in the outset, that 
every thing you can see in Nature is seen only so far as it is 
lighter or darker than the things about it, or of a different 
colour from them. Itis either seen as a patch of one colour 
on a ground of another ; or as a pale thing relieved from a 
dark thing, or a dark thing from a pale thing. And if you 
can put on patches of colour or shade of exactly the same 
size, shape, and gradations as those on the object and its 
eround, you will produce the appearance of the object and 
its ground. The best draughtsman—Titian and Paul Veronese 
themselves—could do no more than this; and you will soon 
be able to get some power of doing it in an inferior way, if 
you once understand the exceeding simplicity of what is to be 
done. Suppose you have a brown book on a white sheet of 
paper, on a red tablecloth. You have nothing to do but to 
put on spaces of red, white, and brown, in the same shape, 
and gradated from dark to light in the same degrees, and 
your drawing is done. If you will not look at what you see, 
if you try to put on brighter or duller colours than are there, 
if you try to put them on with a dash or a blot, or to cover 


ON FIRST PRACTICE. 257 


your paper with “ vigorous” lines, or to produce anything, in 
fact, but the plain, unaffected, and finished tranquillity of the 
thing before you, you need not hope to get on. Nature will 
show you nothing if you set 
yourself up for her master. 
But forget yourself, and try 
to obey her, and you will find 
obedience easier and happier 
than you think. 

The real difficulties are to 
get the refinement of the 
forms and the evenness of the 
gradations. You may depend 
upon it, when you are dissat- 
isfied with your work, it is 
always too coarse or too un- 
even. It may not be wrong 
—in all probability is not 
wrong, in any (so-called) 
great point. But its edges 
are not true enough in out- 
line ; and its shades are in 
blotches, or scratches, or full 
of white holes. Get it more 
tender and more true, and 
you will find it is more pow- 
erful. 

Do not, therefore, think 
your drawing must be weak 
because you have a finely 
pointed pen in your hand. 
Till you can draw -with that, 
you can draw with nothing ; 
when you can draw with that, 
you can draw with a log of wood charred at the end. True 
boldness and power are only to be gained by care. Even in 
fencing and dancing, all ultimate ease depends on early preci- 
sion in the commencement ; much more in singing or drawing, 


Fig. 5. 





258 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


Now, I do not want you to copy Fig, 5., but to copy the 
stone before you in the way that Fig. 5. is done. To which 
end, first measure the extreme length of the stone with com- 
passes, and mark that length on your paper ; then, between 
the points marked, leave something like the form of the stone 
in light, scrawling the paper all over, round it, as at b, Fig. 5. 
You cannot rightly see what the form of the stone really is 
till you begin finishing, so sketch it in quite rudely; only 
rather leave too much room for the high light, than too little : 
and then more cautiously fill in the shade, shutting the light 
eradually up, and putting in the dark cautiously on the dark 
side. You need not plague yourself about accuracy of shape, 
because, till you have practised a great deal, it is impossible 
for you to draw that shape quite truly, and you must gradu- 
ally gain correctness by means of these various exercises : 
what you have mainly to do at present is, to get the stone to 
look solid and round, not much minding what its exact con- 
tour is—only draw it as nearly right as you can without vexa- 
tion ; and you will get it more right by thus feeling your way 
to it in shade, than if you tried to draw the outline at first. 
For you can see no outline; what you see is only a certain 
space of gradated shade, with other such spaces about it ; and 
those pieces of shade you are to imitate as nearly as you can, 
by scrawling the paper over till you get them to the right 
shape, with the same gradations which they have in Nature. 
And this is really more likely to be done well, if you have to 
fight your way through a little confusion in the sketch, than 
if you have an accurately traced outline. For instance, I was 
going to draw, beside a, another effect on the stone ; reflected 
light bringing its dark side out from the background: but 
when I had laid on the first few touches, I thought it would 
be better to stop, and let you see how I had begun it, at 0. 
In which beginning it will be observed that nothing is so de- 
termined but that I can more or less modify, and add to or 
diminish the contour as I work on, the lines which suggest 
the outline being blended with the others if I do not want 
them ; and the having to fill up the vacancies and conquer the 
irregularities of such a sketch, will probably secure a higher 


ON FIRST PRACTICE. 259 


completion at last, than if half an hour had been spent in 
getting a true outline before beginning. 

In doing this, however, take care not to get the drawing too 
dark. In order to ascertain what the shades of it really are, 
cut a round hole, about half the size of a pea, in a piece of 
white paper, the colour of that you use to draw on. Hold 
this bit of paper, with the hole in it, between you and your 
stone ; and pass the paper backwards and forwards, so as 
to see the different portions of the stone (or other subject) 
through the hole. You will find that, thus, the circular hole 
looks like one of the patches of colour you have been accus- 
tomed to match, only changing in depth as it lets different 
pieces of the stone be seen through it. You will be able thus 
actually to match the colour of the stone, at any part of it, by 
tinting the paper beside the circular opening. And you will 
find that this opening never looks quite black, but that all the 
roundings of the stone are given by subdued greys.* 

You will probably find, also, that some parts of the stone, 
or of the paper it lies on, look luminous through the open- 
ing, so that the little circle then tells as a ight spot instead 
of a dark spot. When this is so, you cannot imitate it, for 
you have no means of getting hght brighter than white paper : 
but by holding the paper more sloped towards the light, you 
will find that many parts of the stone, which before looked 
light through the hole, then look dark through it ; and if you 
can place the paper in such a position that every part of the 
stone looks slightly dark, the little hole will tell always as a 
spot of shade, and if your drawing is put in the same light, 
you can imitate or match every gradation. You will be 
amazed to find, under these circumstances, how slight the 
differences of tint are, by which, through infinite delicacy of 
gradation, Nature can express form. 

If any part of your subject will obstinately show itself as a 
light through the hole, that part you need not hope to imitate. 
Leave it white, you can do no more. 

When you have done the best you can to get the general 

* The figure a, Fig. 5., is very dark, but this is to give an example of 
all kinds of depth of tint, without repeated figures, 


260 THE HLEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


form, proceed to finish, by imitating the texture and all the 
cracks and stains of the stone as closely as you can ; and note, 
in doing this, that cracks or fissures of any kind, whether be- 
tween stones in walls, or in the grain of timber or rocks, or in 
any of the thousand other conditions they present, are never 
expressible by single black lines, or lines of simple shadow. 
A crack must always have its complete system of light and 
shade, however small its scale. It is in reality a little ravine, 
with a dark or shady side, and light or sunny side, and, 
usually, shadow in the bottom. ‘This is one of the instances 
in which it may be as well to understand the reason of the 
appearance ; it is not often so in drawing, for the aspects of 
things are so subtle and confused that they cannot in general 
be explained; and in the endeavour to explain some, we are 
sure to lose sight of others, while the natural overestimate of 
the importance of those on which the attention is fixed, causes 
us to exaggerate them, so that merely scientific draughtsmen 
caricature a third part of Nature, and miss two-thirds. The 
best scholar is he whose eye is so keen as to see at once how 
the thing looks, and who need not, therefore, trouble himself 
with any reasons why it looks so: but few people have this 
acuteness of perception ; and to those who are destitute of it, 
a little pointing out of rule and reason will be a help, espe- 
cially when a master is not near them. I never allow my own 
pupils to ask the reason of anything, because, as I watch their 
work, I can always show them how the thing 1s, and what ap- 
pearance they are missing in it ; but when a master is not by 
to direct the sight, science may, here and there, be allowed 
to do so in his stead. 

Generally, then, every solid illumined object—for instance, 
the stone you are drawing—has a light side turned towards 
the light, a dark side turned away from the light, and a shad- 
ow, which is cast on something else (as by the stone on the 
paper it is set upon). You may sometimes be placed so as to 
see only the light side and shadow, and sometimes only the 
dark side and shadow, and sometimes both, or either, without 
the shadow; but in most positions solid objects will show 
all the three, as the stone does here. 


ON FIRST PRACTICE. 261 


Hold up your hand with the edge of it towards you, as you 
sit now with your side to the window, so that the flat of your 
hand is turned to the window. You will see one side of your 
hand distinctly lighted, the other distinctly in shade. Here 
are light side and dark side, with no seen shadow ; the shadow 
being detached, perhaps on the table, perhaps on the other 
side of the room ; you need not look for it at present. 

Take a sheet of note-paper, and holding it edgeways, as you 
hold your hand, wave it up and down past the side of your 
hand which is turned from the light, the paper being, of 
course, farther from the window. You will see, as it passes a 
strong gleam of light strike on your hand, and light it con- 
siderably on its dark side. This light is reflected light. It is 
thrown back from the paper (on which it strikes first in com- 
ing from the window) to the surface of your hand, just as a 
ball would be if somebody threw it through the window at the 
wall and you caught it at the rebound. 

Next, instead of the note-paper, take a red book, or a piece 
of scarlet cloth. You will see that the gleam of light falling 
on your hand, as you wave the book is now reddened. Take 
a blue book, and you will find the gleam is blue. Thus every 
object will cast some of its own colour back in the light that 
it reflects. 

Now it is not only these books or papers that reflect light 
to your hand: every object in the room, on that side of it, re- 
flects some, but more feebly, and the colours mixing all to- 
gether form a neutral* light, which lets the colour of your 
hand itself be more distinctly seen than that of any object 
which reflects light to it; but if there were no reflected light, 
that side of your hand would look as black as a coal. 

Objects are seen, therefore in general, partly by direct light, 
and partly by light reflected from the objects around them, 
or fromthe atmosphere and clouds. The colour of their ight 
sides depends much on that of the direct hight, and that of 
the dark sides on the colours of the objects near them. It is 

* Nearly neutral in ordinary circumstances, but yet with quite differ- 


ent tones in its neutrality, according to the colours of the various re 
flected rays that compose it. 


262 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


therefore impossible to say beforehand what colour an object 
will have at any point of its surface, that colour depending 
partly on its own tint, and partly on infinite combinations of 
rays reflected from other things. The only certain fact about 
dark sides is, that their colour will be changeful, and that a 
picture which gives them merely darker shades of the colour 
of the light sides must assuredly be bad. 

Now, lay your hand flat on the white paper you are drawing 
on. You will see one side of each finger lighted, one side dark, 
and the shadow of your hand on the paper. Here, therefore, 
are the three divisions of shade seen at once. And although 
the paper is white, and your hand of a rosy colour somewhat 
darker than white, yet you will see that the shadow all along, 
just under the finger which casts it, is darker than the flesh, 
and is of a very deep grey. The reason of this is, that much 
light is reflected from the paper to the dark side of your fin- 
ger, but very little is reflected from other things to the paper 
itself in that chink under your finger. 

In general, for this reason, a shadow, or, at any rate, the 
part of the shadow nearest the object, is darker than the dark 
side of the object. I say in general, because a thousand ac- 
cidents may interfere to prevent its being so. Take a little 
bit of glass, as a wine-glass, or the ink-bottle, and play it about 
a little on the side of your hand farthest from the window ; 
you will presently find you are throwing gleams of light all 
over the dark side of your hand, and in some positions of the 
glass the reflection from it will annihilate the shadow al- 
together, and you will see your hand dark on the white paper. 
Now astupid painter would represent, for instance, a drinking- 
elass beside the hand of one of his figures, and because he 
had been taught by rule that ‘shadow was darker than 
the dark side,” he would never think of the reflection from 
the glass, but paint a dark grey under the hand, just as if no 
glass were there. But a great painter would be sure to think 
of the true effect, and paint it; and then comes the stupid 
critic, and wonders why the hand is so light on its dark side. 

Thus it is always dangerous to assert anything as a rule in 
matters of art; yet it is useful for you to remember that, in 


ON FIRST PRACTICE. 263 


a general way, a shadow is darker than the dark side of the 
thing that casts it, supposing the colours otherwise the same ; 
that is to say, when a white object casts a shadow on a white 
surface, or a dark object on a dark surface: the rule will not 
hold if the colours are different, the shadow of a black object 
on a white surface being, of course, not so dark, usually, as 
the black thing casting it. The only way to ascertain the ulti- 
mate truth in such matters is to look for it ; but, in the mean- 
time, you will be helped by noticing that the cracks in the 
stone are little ravines, on one side of which the light strikes 
sharply, while the other isin shade. This dark side usually 
casts a little darker shadow at the bottom of the crack ; and 
the general tone of the stone surface is not so bright as the 
light bank of the ravine. And, therefore, if you get the sur- 
face of the object of a uniform tint, more or less indicative of 
shade, and then scratch out a white spot or streak in it of any 
shape; by putting a .dark touch beside this white one, you 
may turn it, as you choose, into either a ridge or an incision, 
into either a boss or a cavity. If you put the dark touch on 
the side of it nearest the sun, or rather, nearest the place that 
the light comes from, you will make it a cut or cavity ; if you 
put it on the opposite side, you will make it a ridge or mound : 
and the complete success of the effect depends less on depth 
of shade than on the rightness of the drawing ; that is to say, 
on the evident correspondence of the form of the shadow with 
the form that casts it. In drawing rocks, or wood, or any- 
thing irregularly shaped, you will gain far more by a little 
patience in following the forms carefully, though with slight 
touches, than by laboured finishing of textures of surface and 
transparencies of shadow. 

When you have got the whole well into shape, proceed to 
jay on the stains and spots with great care, quite as much as 
you gave to the forms. Very often, spots or bars of local 
colour do more to express form than even the light and shade, 
and they are always interesting as the means by which Nature 
carries light into her shadows, and shade into her lights, an 
art of which we shall have more to say hereafter, in speaking 
of composition. Fig. 5.isa rough sketch of a fossil sea-urchin, 


264 THE HLEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


in which the projections of the shell are of black flint, coming 
through a chalky surface. These projections form dark spots 
in the light ; and their sides, rising out of the shadow, form 
smaller whitish spots in the dark. You may take such scat- 
tered lights as these out with the penknife, provided you are 
just as careful to place them rightly, as if you got them by a 
more laborious process. 

When you have once got the feeling of the way in which 
gradation expresses roundness and projection, you may try 
your strength on anything natural or artificial that happens 
to take your fancy, provided it be not too complicated in 
form. Ihave asked you to draw a stone first, because any 
irregularities and failures in your shading will be less offensive 
to you, as being partly characteristic of the rough stone sur- 
face, than they would be in a more delicate subject ; and you 
may as well go on drawing rounded stones of different shapes 
for a little while, till you find you can really shade delicately. 
You may then take up folds of thick white drapery, a napkin 
or towel thrown carelessly on the table is as good as anything, 
and try to express them in the same way ; only now you will 
find that your shades must be wrought with perfect unity and 
tenderness, or you will lose the flow of the folds. Always re- 
member that a little bit perfected is worth more than many 
scrawls ; whenever you feel yourself inclined to scrawl, give 
up work resolutely, and do not go back to it till next day. 
Of course your towel or napkin must be put on something 
that may be locked up, so that its folds shall not be disturbed 
till you have finished. If you find that the folds will not look 
right, get a photograph of a piece of drapery (there are plenty 
now to be bought, taken from the sculpture of the cathedrals 
of Rheims, Amiens, and Chartres, which will at once educate 
your hand and your taste), and copy some piece of that; you 
will then ascertain what it is that is wanting in your studies 
from nature, whether more gradation, or greater watchfulness 
of the disposition of the folds. Probably for some time you will 
find yourself failing painfully in both, for drapery is very diffi- 
cult to follow in its sweeps ; but do not lose courage, for the 
greater the difficulty, the greater the gain in the effort. If 


ON FIRST PRACTICE. 265 


your eye is more justin measurement of form than delicate in 
perception of tint, a pattern on the folded surface will help 
you. Try whether it does or not; and if the patterned 
drapery confuses you, keep for a time to the simple white 
one ; but if it helps you, continue to choose patterned stuffs 
(tartans, and simple chequered designs are better at first than 
flowered ones), and even though it should confuse you, begin 
pretty soon to use a pattern occasionally, copying all the dis- 
tortions and perspective modifications of it among the folds 
with scrupulous care. 

Neither must you suppose yourself condescending in doing 
this. The greatest masters are always fond of drawing pat- 
terns ; and the greater they are, the more pains they take to 
do ittruly.* Nor can there be better practice at any time, as 
introductory to the nobler complication of natural detail. 
For when you can draw the spots which follow the folds of a 
printed stuff, you will have some chance of following the spots 
which fall into the folds of the skin of a leopard as he leaps; 
but if you cannot draw the manufacture, assuredly you will 
never be able to draw the creature. So the cloudings on a 
piece of wood, carefully drawn, will be the best introduction 
to the drawing of the clouds of the sky, or the waves of the 
sea ; and the dead leaf-patterns on a damask drapery, well 
rendered, will enable you to disentangle masterfully the living 
leaf-patterns of a thorn thicket, or a violet bank. 

Observe, however, in drawing any stuffs, or bindings of 
books, or other finely textured substances, do not trouble 
yourself, as yet, much about the woolliness or gauziness of the 
thing ; but get it right in shade and fold, and true in pattern. 
We shall see, in the course of after-practice, how the penned 


* If we had any business with the reasons of this, I might, perhaps, 
be able to show you some metaphysical ones for the enjoyment, by 
truly artistical minds, of the changes wrought by light, and shade, and 
perspective in patterned surfaces; but this is at present not to the 
point ; and all that you need to know is that the drawing of such things 
is good exercise, and moreover a kind of exercise which Titian, Vero- 
nese, Tintoret, Giorgione, and Turner, all enjoyed, and strove to excel 
in, 


266 THE HLEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


lines may be made indicative of texture ; but at present at 
tend only to the light, and shade, and pattern. You will be 
puzzled at first by /ustrous surfaces, but a little attention will 
show you that the expression of these depends merely on the 
right drawing of their light, and shade, and reflections. Put 
a small black japanned tray on the table in front of some 
books ; and you will see it reflects the objects beyond it as in 
a little black rippled pond; its own colour mingling always 
with that of the reflected objects. Draw these reflections of 
the books properly, making them dark and distorted, as you 
will see that they are, and you will find that this gives the 
lustre to your tray. It is not well, however, to draw polished 
objects in general practice ; only you should do one or two in 
order to understand the aspect of any lustrous portion of 
other things, such as you cannot avoid ; the gold, for instance, 
on the edges of books, or the shining ae suk and damask, in 
which lies a great part of the expression of their folds. Ob- 
serve, also, that there are very few things which axe totally 
without lustre : you will frequently find a light which puzzles 
you, on some apparently dull surface, to be the dim image of 
another object. 

And now, as soon as you can conscientiously assure me that 
with the point of the pen or pencil you can lay on any form 
and shade you like, I give you leave to use the brush with one 
colour,—sepia, or blue-black, or mixed cobalt and blue-black, 
or neutral tint ; and this will much facilitate your study, and 
refresh you. But, preliminarily, you must do one or two more 
exercises in tinting. 


EXERCISE IX. 


Prepare your colour as before directed. Take a brush full 
of it, and strike it on the paper in any irregular shape ; as the 
brush gets dry sweep the surface of the paper with it as if you 
were dusting the paper very lightly ; every such sweep of the 
brush will leave a number of more or less minute interstices 
in the colour. The lighter and faster every dash the better. 
Then leave the whole to dry, and as soon as it is dry, with lit- 


ON FIRST PRACTICE. 267 


tle colour in your brush, so that you can bring it to a fine 
point, fill up all the little interstices one by one, so as to make 
the whole as even as you can, and fill in the larger gaps with 
more colour, always trying to let the edges of the first and of 
the newly applied colour exactly meet, and not lap over each 
other. When your new colour dries, you will find it in places 
a little paler than the first. Retouch it, therefore, trying to 
get the whole to look quite one piece. A very small bit of 
colour thus filled up with your very best care, and brought to 
look as if it had been quite even from the first, will give you 
better practice and more skill than a great deal filled in care- 
lessly ; so do it with your best patience, not leaving the most 
minute spot of white ; and do not fill in the large pieces first 
and then go to the small, but quietly and steadily cover in the 
whole up toa marked limit; then advance a little farther, and 
so on ; thus always seeing distinctly what is done and what 
undone. 


EXERCISE X. 


Lay a coat of the blue, prepared as usual, over a whole 
square of paper. Let it dry. Then another coat over four- 
fifths of the square, or thereabouts, leaving the edge rather ir- 
regular than straight, and let it dry. Then another coat over 
three-fifths ; another over two-fifths; and the last over one- 
fifth ; so that the square may present the appearance of grad- 
ual increase in darkness in five bands, each darker than the 
one beyond it. Then, with the brush rather dry (as in the 
former exercise, when filling up the interstices), try, with 
small touches, like those used in the pen etching, only a little 
broader, to add shade delicately beyond each edge, so as to 
lead the darker tints into the paler ones imperceptibly. By 
touching the paper very lightly, and putting a multitude of 
little touches, crossing and recrossing in every direction, you 
will gradually be able to work up to the darker tints, outside of 
each, so as quite to efface their edges, and unite them ten- 
derly with the next tint. The whole square, when done, 
should look evenly shaded from dark to pale, with no bars ; 


268 THE HLEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


only a crossing texture of touches, something like chopped 
straw, over the whole.* 

Next, take your rounded pebble; arrange it in any light 
and shade you like ; outline it very loosely with the pencil. 
Put on a wash of colour, prepared very pale, quite flat over 
all of it, except the highest light, leaving the edge of your 
colour quite sharp. ‘Then another wash, extending only over 
the darker parts, leaving the edge of that sharp also, as in 
tinting the square. Then another wash over the still darker 
parts, and another over the darkest, leaving each edge to dry 
sharp. Then, with the small touches, efface the edges, rein- | 
force the darks, and work the whole delicately together, as you 
would with the pen, till you have got it to the likeness of the 
true light and shade. You will find that the tint underneath 
isa great help, and that you can now get effects much more 
subtle and complete than with the pen merely. . 

The use of leaving the edges always sharp is that you may 
not trouble or vex the colour, but let it lie as it falls suddenly 
on the paper ; colour looks much more lovely when it has been 
laid on with a dash of the brush, and left to dry in its own 
way, than when it has been dragged about and disturbed ; so 
that it is always better to let the edges and forms bea litle 
wrong, even if one cannot correct them afterwards, than to 
lose this fresh quality of the tint. Very great masters in water- 
colour can lay on the true forms at once with a dash, and bad 
masters in water-colour lay on grossly false forms with a dash, 
and leave them false ; for people in general, not knowing false 
from true, are as much pleased with the appearance of power 
in the irregular blot as with the presence of power in the de- 
termined one; but we, in our beginnings, must do as much as 
we can with the broad dash, and then correct with the point, 
till we are quite right. We must take care to be right, at 
whatever cost of pains ; and then gradually we shall find we 
can be right» with freedom. 

I have hitherto limited you to colour mixed with two or 

* The use of aequiring this habit of execution is that you may be able, 


when you begin to colour, to let one hue be seen in minute portions, 
gleaming between the touches of another. 


ON FIRST PRACTICE. 269 


three teaspoonfuls of water; but in finishing your light and 
shade from the stone, you may, as you efface the edge of the 
palest coat towards the light, use the colour for the small 
touches with more and more water, till it is so pale as not to 
be perceptible. Thus you may obtain a perfect gradation to 
the light.. And in reinforcing the darks, when they are very 
dark, you may use less and less water. If you take the colour 
tolerably dark on your brush, only always liquid (not pasty), 
and dash away the superfluous colour on blotting-paper, you 
will find that, touching the paper very lightly with the dry 
brush, you can, by repeated touches, produce a dusty kind of 
bloom, very valuable in giving depth to shadow ; but it re- 
quires great patience and delicacy of hand to do this properly. 
You will find much of this kind of work in the grounds and 
shadows of William Hunt’s drawings.* 

As you get used to the brush and colour, you will gradually 
find out their ways for yourself, and get the management of 
them. Nothing but practice will do this perfectly; but you 
will often save yourself much discouragement by remembering 
what I have so often asserted,—that if anything goes wrong, 
it is nearly sure to be refinement that is wanting, not force ; 
and connexion, not alteration. - If you dislike the state your 
drawing is in, do not lose patience with it, nor dash at it, nor 
alter its plan, nor rub it desperately out, at the place you 
think wrong; but look if there are no shadows you can egra- 
date more perfectly ; no little gaps and rents you can fill; no 
forms you can more delicately define: and do not rush at any 
of the errors or incompletions thus discerned, but efface or 
supply slowly, and you will soon find your drawing take 
another look. A very useful expedient in producing some 
effects, is to wet the paper, and then lay the colour on it, more 
or less wet, according to the effect you want. You will soon 
see how prettily it gradates itself as it dries; when dry, you 
can reinforce it with delicate stippling when you want it 
darker. Also, while the colour is still damp on the paper, by 
drying your brush thoroughly, and touching the colour with 
the brush so dried, you may take out soft lights with great 

* William Hunt, of the Old Water-colour Society. 


270 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


tenderness and precision. Try all sorts of experiments of thia 
kind, noticing how the colour behaves ; but remembering al- 
ways that your final results must be obtained, and can only 
be obtained, by pure work with the point, as much as in the 
pen drawing. 

You will find also, as you deal with more and more compli- 
cated subjects, that Nature’s resources in light and shade are 
so much richer than yours, that you cannot possibly get all, or 
anything like all, the gradations of shadow in any given group. 
When this is the case, determine first to keep the broad masses 
of things distinct: if, for instance, there is a green book, and 
a white piece of paper, and a black inkstand in the group, be 
sure to keep the white paper as a light mass, the green book 
as a middle tint mass, the black inkstand as a dark mass; and 
do not shade the folds in the paper, or corners of the book, so 
as to equal in depth the darkness of the inkstand. The great 
difference between the masters of light and shade, and imper- 
fect artists, is the power of the former to draw so delicately 
as to express form in a dark-coloured object with little light, 
and in a light-coloured object with little darkness ; and it is 
better even to leave the forms here and there unsatisfactorily 
rendered than to lose the general relations of the great masses. 
And this observe, not because masses are grand or desirable 
things in your composition (for with composition at present 
you have nothing whatever to do), but because it is a fact that 
things do so present themselves to the eyes of men, and that 
we see paper, book, and inkstand as three separate things, be- 
fore we see the wrinkles, or chinks, or corners of any of the 
three. Understand, therefore, at once, that no detail can be 
as strongly expressed in drawing as it is in the reality ; and 
strive to keep all your shadows and marks and minor mark- 
ings on the masses, lighter than they appear to be in Nature, 
you are sure otherwise to get them too dark. You will in 
doing this find that you cannot get the projection of things 
sufficiently shown; but never mind that; there is no need 
that they should appear to project, but great need that 
their relations of shade to each other should be preserved. 
All deceptive projection is obtained by partial exaggeration of 


ON FIRST PRACTICE. 271 


shadow ; and whenever you see it, you may be sure the draw- 
ing is more or less bad ; a thoroughly fine drawing or paint- 
ing will always show a slight tendency towards flatness. 

Observe, on the other hand, that however white an object 
may be, there is always some small point of it whiter than the 
rest. You must therefore have a slight tone of grey over 
everything in your picture except on the extreme high lights ; 
even the piece of white paper, in your subject, must be toned 
slightly down, unless (and there are a thousand chances to 
one against its being so) it should all be turned so as fully to 
front the ight. By examining the treatment of the white ob- 
jects in any pictures accessible to you by Paul Veronese or 
Titian, you will soon understand this.* 

_ As soon as you feel yourself capable of expressing with the 
brush the undulations of surfaces and the relations of masses, 
you may proceed to draw more complicated and beautiful 
things.+ And first, the boughs of trees, now not in mere dark 
relief, but in full rounding. Take the first bit of branch or 
stump that comes to hand, with a fork in it; cut off the ends 
of the forking branches, so as to leave the whole only about 
a foot in length; get a piece of paper the same size, fix your 
bit of branch in some place where its position will not be 
altered, and draw it thoroughly, in all its light and shade, full 
size ; striving, above all things, to get an accurate expression 
of its structure at the fork of the branch. When once you 

* At Marlborough House, among the four principal examples of Tur- 
ner’s later water-colour drawing, perhaps the most neglected is that of 
fishing-boats and fish at sunset. It is one of his most wonderful works, 
though unfinished. If yon examine the larger white fishing-boat sail, 
you will find it has a little spark of pure white in its right-hand upper 
corner, about as large as a minute pin’s head, and that all the surface of 
the sail is gradated to that focus. Try to copy this sail ouce or twice, 
and you will begin to understand Turners work. Similarly, the wing 
of the Cupid in Correggio’s large picture in the National Gallery is fo- 
cussed to two little grains of white at the top of it. The points of light 
on the white flower in the wreath round the head of the dancing child- 
faun, in Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne, exemplify the same thing. 

+I shall not henceforward number the exercises recommended ; as 
they are distinguished only by increasing difficulty of subject, not by 
difference of method. 


272 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


have mastered the tree at its armpits, you will have little more 
trouble with it. 

Always draw whatever the background happens to be, ex- 
actly as you see it. Wherever you have fastened the bough, 
you must draw whatever is behind it, ugly or not, else you will 
never know whether the light and shade are right ; they may 
appear quite wrong to you, only for want of the background. 
And this general law is to be ob- 
served in all your studies: what- 
ever you draw, draw completely 
and unalteringly, else you never 
know if what you have done is 
right, or whether you could have 
done it rightly had you tried. 
There is nothing visible out of 
which you may not get useful 
practice. 

Next, to put the leaves on your 
boughs. Gather asmall twig with 
four or five leaves on it, put it into 
water, put a sheet of light-col- 
oured or white paper behind it, 
so that all the leaves may be re- 
lieved in dark from the white 
field ; then sketch in their dark 
shape carefully with pencil as you 
did the complicated boughs, in 
order to be sure that all their 
masses and interstices are right in 
shape before you begin shading, 

ig and complete as far as you can 
with pen and ink, in the manner of Fig. 6., which is a young 
shoot of lilac. 

You will probably, in spite of all your pattern drawings, be 
at first puzzled by leaf foreshortening ; especially because the 





Do? 

look of retirement or projection depends not so much on the 
perspective of the leaves themselves as on the double sight of 
the two eyes. Now there are certain arlifices by which good 


ON FIRST PRACTICE. 273 


painters can partly conquer this difficulty ; as slight exaggera- 
tions of force or colour in the nearer parts, and of obscurity 
in the more distant ones ; but you must not attempt anything 
of this kind. _Wheu you are first sketching the leaves, shut 
one of your eyes, fix a point in the background, to bring the 
point of one of the leaves against, and so sketch the whole 
_ bough as you see it in a fixed position, looking with one eye 
only. Your drawing never can be made to look like the ob- 
ject itself, as you see that object with both eyes,* but it can be 
made perfectly like the object seen with one, and you must be 
content when you have got a resemblance on these terms. 

In order to get clearly at the notion of the thing to be done, 
take a single long leaf, hold it with its point towards you, and 
as flat as you can, so as to see nothing of it but its thinness, 
as if you wanted to know how thin it was; outline it so. 
Then slope it down gradually towards you, and watch it as it 
lengthens out to its full length, held perpendicularly down 
before you.. Draw it in three or four different positions be- 
tween these extremes, with its ribs as they appear in each 
position, and you will soon find out how it must be. 

Draw first only two or three of the leaves ; then larger clus- 
ters; and practise, in this way, more and more complicated 
pieces of bough and leafage, till you find you can master the 
most difficult arrangements, not consisting of more than ten 
or twelve leaves. You will find as you do this, if you have an 
opportunity of visiting any gallery of pictures, that you take a 
much more lively interest than before in the work of the great 
masters ; you will see that very often their best backgrounds 
are composed of little more than a few sprays of leafage, care- 
fully studied, brought against the distant sky; and that an- 
other wreath or two form the chief interest of their fore- 
grounds. If you live in London you may test your progress 
accurately by the degree of admiration you feel for the leaves 
of vine round the head of the Bacchus, in Titian’s Bacchus 


*If you understand the principle of the stereoscope you will know 
why ; if not, it does not matter ; trust me for the truth of the state- 
ment, as I cannot explain the principle without diagrams and much loss 
of time. 


274 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


and Ariadne. All this, however, will not enable you to draw 
a mass of foliage. You will find, on looking at any rich piece 
of. vegetation, that it is only one or two of the nearer clusters 
that you can by any possibility draw in this complete manner. 
The mass is too vast, and too intricate, to be thus dealt with. 

You must now therefore have recourse to some confused 
mode of execution, capable of expressing the confusion of 
Nature. And, first, you must understand what the character 
of that confusion is. If you look carefully at the outer sprays 
of any tree at twenty or thirty yards’ distance, you will see 
them defined against the sky in masses, which, at first, look 
quite definite ; but if you examine them, you will see, mingled 
with the real shapes of leaves, many indistinct lines, which are, 





b Xa 


C em. 


Fia. 7%. 


some of them, stalks of leaves, and some, leaves seen with the 
edge turned towards you, and coming into sight in a broken 
way ; for, supposing the real leaf shape to be as at a, Fig. 7., 
this, when removed some yards from the eye, will appear dark 
against the sky, as at b; then, when removed some yards 
farther still, the stalk and point disappear altogether, the mid- 
dle of the leaf becomes little more than a line ; and the result 
is the condition atc, only with this farther subtlety in the look 
of it, inexpressible in the woodcut, that the stalk and point of 
the leaf, though they have disappeared to the eye, have yet 
some influence in checking the light at the places where they 
exist, and cause a slight dimness about the part of the leaf 
which remains visible, so that its perfect effect could only be 
rendered by two layers of colour, one subduing the sky tone 


ON FIRST PRACTICE. 2.5 


a little, the next drawing the broken portions of the leaf, as at 
ce, and carefully indicating the greater darkness of the spot in 
the middle, where the under side of the leaf is. 

This is the perfect theory of the matter. In practice we 
cannot reach such accuracy ; but we shall be able to render 
the general look of the foliage satisfactorily by the following 
mode of practice. 

Gather a spray of any tree, about a foot or eighteen inches 
long. Fix it firmly by the stem in anything that will support 
it steadily ; put it about eight feet away from you, or ven if 





Fie. 8. 


you are far-sighted. Put a sheet of not very white paper 
behind it, as usual. Then draw very carefully, first placing 
them with pencil, and then filling them up with ink, every 
leaf, mass and stalk of it in simple black profile, as you see 
them against the paper: Fig. 8. is a bough of Phillyrea so 
drawn. Do not be afraid of running the leaves into a black 
amass when they come together ; this exercise is only to teach 
you what the actual shapes of such masses are when seen 
against the sky. 

Make two careful studies of this kind of one bough of every 
common tree—oak, ash, elm, birch, beech, Xe. ; in fact, if you 


276 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


are good, and industrious, you will make one such study care- 
fully at least three times a week, until you have examples of 
every sort of tree and shrub you can get branches of. You 
are to make two studies of each bough, for this reason—all 
masses of foliage have an upper and under surface, and the 
side view of them, or profile, shows a wholly different organisa- 
tion of branches from that seen in the view from above. They 
are generally seen more or less in profile, as you look at the 
whole tree, and Nature puts her best composition into the 
profile arrangement. But the view from above or below oc- 
curs not unfrequently, also, and it is quite necessary you 
should draw it if you wish to understand the anatomy of the 
tree. The difference between the two views is often far greater 





Fria. 9. 


than you could easily conceive. For instance, in Fig. 9., a is 
the upper view, and b the profile, of a single spray of Philly- 
rea. Fig. 8. is an intermediate view of a larger bough; seen 
from beneath, but at some lateral distance also. __ 

When you have done a few branches in this manner, take 
one of the drawings, and put it first a yard away from you, 
then a yard and a half, then two yards; observe how the thin- 
ner stalks and leaves gradually disappear, leaving only a vague 
and slight darkness where they were, and make another study 
of the effect at each distance, taking care to draw nothing 
more than you really see, for in this consists all the difference 
between what would be merely a miniature drawing of the 
leaves seen near, and a full-size drawing of the same leaves at 
a distance. By full size, I mean the size which they would 
really appear of if their outline were traced through a pane of 


ON FIRST PRACTICE. 277 


glass held at the same distance from the eye at which you 
mean to hold your drawing. You can always ascertain this 
full size of any object by holding your paper upright before 
you, at the distance from your eye at which you wish your 
drawing to be seen. Bring its edge across the object you 
have to draw, and mark upon this edge the points where the 
outline of the object crosses, or goes behind, the edge of the 
paper. You will always find it, thus measured, smaller than 
you supposed. 

When you have made a few careful experiments of this 
kind on your own drawings, (which are better for practice, at 
first, than the real trees, because the black profile in the draw- 
ing is quite stable, and does not shake, and is not confused by 
sparkles of lustre on the leaves,) you may try the extremities 
of the real trees, only not doing much at a time, for the 
brightness of the sky will dazzle and perplex your sight. And 
this brightness causes, I believe, some loss of the outline 
itself ; at least the chemical action of the light in a photograph 
extends much within the edges of the leaves, and, as it were, 
eats them away so that no tree extremity, stand it ever so 
still, nor any other form coming against bright sky, is truly 
drawn by a photograph ; and if you once succeed in drawing a 
few sprays rightly, you will find the result much more lovely 
and interesting than any photograph can be. 

All this difficulty, however, attaches to the rendering merely 
the dark form of the sprays as they come against the sky. 
Within those sprays, and in the heart of the tree, there is a 
complexity of a much more embarrassing kind ; for nearly all 
leaves have some lustre, and all are more or less translucent 
(letting light through them); therefore, in any given leaf, 
besides the intricacies of its own proper shadows and fore- 
shortenings, there are three series of circumstances which 
alter or hide its forms, First, shadows cast on it by other 
leaves—often very forcibly. Secondly, light reflected from 
its lustrous surface, sometimes the blue of the sky, sometimes 
the white of clouds, or the sun itself flashing like a star, 
Thirdly, forms and shadows of other leaves, seen as darkness 
through the translucent parts of the leaf; a most important 


278 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


element of foliage effect, but wholly neglected by landscape 
artists in general. 

The consequence of all this is, that except now and then by 
chance, the form of a complete leaf is never seen; but a mar- 
vellous and quaint confusion, very definite, indeed, in its evi- 
dence of direction of growth, and unity of action, but wholly 
indefinable and inextricable, part by part, by any amount of 
patience. You cannot possibly work it out in fac simile, 
though you took a twelvemonth’s time to a tree; and you 
must therefore try to discover some mode of execution which 
will more or less imitate, by its own variety and mystery, the 
variety and mystery of Nature, without absolute delineation 
of detail. 

Now I have led you to this conclusion by observation of 
tree form only, because in that the thing to be proved is clear- 
est. But no natural object exists which does not involve in 
some part or parts of it this inimitableness, this mystery of 
quantity, which needs peculiarity of handling and trick of 
touch to express it completely. If leaves are intricate, so is 
moss, so is foam, so is rock cleavage, so are fur and hair, and 
texture of drapery, and of clouds. And although methods 
and dexterities of handling are wholly useless if you have not 
gained first the thorough knowledge of the form of the thing ; 
so that if you cannot draw a branch perfectly, then much less 
a tree; and if nota wreath of mist perfectly, much less a 
flock of clouds; and if not a single grass blade perfectly, 
much less a grass bank; yet having once got this power over 
decisive form, you may safely—and must, in order to perfec- 
tion of work—carry out your knowledge by every aid of method 
and dexterity of hand. 

But, in order to find out what method can do, you must now 
look at Art as well as at Nature, and see what means paint- 
ers and engravers have actually employed for the expression 
of these subtleties. Whereupon arises the question, what 
opportunity have you to obtain engravings? You ought, if it 
is at all in your power, to possess yourself of a certain num- 
ber of good examples of Turner’s engraved works: if this be 
not in your power, you must just make the best use you can 


ON FIRST PRACTICE. 279 


of the shop windows, or of any plates of which you can obtain 
aloan. Very possibly, the difficulty of getting sight of them 
may stimulate you to put them to better use. But, supposing 
your means admit of your doing so, possess yourself, first, of 
the illustrated edition either of Rogers’s Italy or Rogers's 
Poems, and then of about a dozen of the plates named in the 
annexed lists. The prefixed letters indicate the particular 
points deserving your study in each engraving.* Be sure, 


* If you can, get first the plates marked with a star. The letters 

mean as follows :— 

a stands for architecture, including distant grouping of towns, cottages, 
&e. 

¢ clouds, including mist and aerial effects. 

tf foliage. 

g ground, including low hills, when not rocky. 

l effects of light. 

m mountains, or bold rocky ground. 

p power of general arrangement and effect. 

¢g quiet water. 

7 running or rough water; or rivers, even if calm, when their line of 
flow is beautifully marked. 


From the England Series. 


acfr. Arundel. afg. Trematon. 
afl. Ashby de la Zouche. af p. Lancaster. 
algr. Barnard Castle. * clmvr. Lancaster Sands, * 
J mr. Bolton Abbey. ag f. Launceston. 
fg. Buckfastleigh. * cflr. Leicester Abbey. 
al. Caernarvon. Jv. Ludlow. 
clgq. Castle Upnor. afl. Margate. 
afl. Colchester. alg. Orford. 
ig. Cowes. cp. Plymouth. 
ef p. Dartmouth Cove. JS. Powis Castle. 
clq. Flint Castle. * lmq. Prudhoe Castle. 
afgt. Knaresborough.* fimr. Chain Bridge over Tees.* 
mv. High Force of Tees.* mq. Ulleswater. 


fm. Valle Crucis. 


From the Keepsake. 


mpq. Arona. p. St. Germain en Laye. 
m. Drachenfells. lpg. Florence. 
fl. Marley.* lm. Ballyburgh Ness. * 


280 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


therefore, that your selection includes, at all events, one plate 
marked with each letter—of course the plates marked with two 
or three letters are, for the most part, the best. Do not get 
more than twelve of these plates, nor even all the twelve at first. 
For the more engravings you have, the less attention you 
will pay to them. It isa general truth, that the enjoyment 
derivable from art cannot be increased in quantity, beyond a 
certain point, by quantity of possession ; it is only spread, as 
it were, over a larger surface, and very often dulled by find- 
ing ideas repeated in different works. Now, for a beginner, 
it is always better that his attention should be concentrated 
on one or two good things, and all his enjoyment founded on 
them, than that he should look at many, with divided thoughts, 
He has much to discover; and his best way of discovering it 
is to think long over few things, and watch them earnestly. It 
is one of the worst errors of this age to try to know and to 
see too much: the men who seem to know everything, never 
in reality know anything rightly. Beware of hand-book knowl- 
edge. 

These engravings are, in general, more for you to look at 


From the Bible Series. 


J m. Mount Lebanon. acg. Joppa. 
“m. Rock of Moses at Sinai. elpq. Solomon's Pools.* 
alm. Jericho. . al, Santa Saba, 


al. Pool of Bethesda. 


From Scott's Warks. 


pr. Melrose. ‘em. Glencoe. 
fr. Dryburgh.* em. Loch Coriskin. 
@ i, Caerlaverock. 


From the ‘** Rivers af France.” 


aq. Chateau of Amboise, with ap. Rouen Cathedral. 
large bridge on right. J p. Pont de Arche. 
tpvr. Rouen, looking down the fl p. View on the Seine, with 
river, poplars on right.* avenue. 


alp, Rouen, with cathedral and acp. Bridge of Meulan. 
rainbow, avenue on the left. cgp7,. Caudehbec.* 


ON FIRST’ PRACTICE. 281 


than to copy ; and they will be of more use to you when we 
come to talk of composition, than they are at present ; still, it 
will do you a great deal of good, sometimes to try how far 
you can get their delicate texture, or gradations of tone; as 
your pen-and-ink drawing will be apt to incline too much to 
a scratchy and broken kind of shade. For instance, the text- 
ure of the white convent wall, and the drawing of its tiled 
roof, in the vignette at p. 227. of Rogers’s Poems, is as ex- 
quisite as work can possibly be ; and it will be a great and 
profitable achievement if you can at all approach it. In like 
manner, if you can at all imitate the dark distant country at 
p. 7., or the sky at p. 80., of the same volume, or the foliage 
at pp. 12. and 144., it will be good gain; and if you can once 
draw the rolling clouds and running river at p. 9. of the 
“Ttaly,” or the city in the vignette of Aosta at p. 25., or the 
moonlight at p. 223., you will find that even Nature herself 
cannot afterwards very terribly puzzle you with her torrents, 
or towers, or moonlight. 

You need not copy touch for touch, but try to get the same 
effect. And if you feel discouraged by the delicacy required, 
and begin to think that engraving is not drawing, and that 
copying it cannot help you to draw, remember that it differs 
from common drawing only by the difficulties it has to en- 
counter. You perhaps have got into a careless habit of think- 
ing that engraving is a mere business, easy enough when one 
has got into the knack of it. On the contrary, it is a form of 
drawing more difficult than common drawing, by exactly so 
much as it is more difficult to eut steel than to move the pen- 
cil over paper. It is true that there are certain mechanical 
aids and methods which reduce it at certain stages either to 
pure machine work, or to more or less a habit of hand and 
arm ; but this is not so in the foliage you are trying to copy, 
of which the best and prettiest parts are always etched—that 
is, drawn with a fine steel point and free hand: only the line 
made is white instead of black, which renders it much more 
difficult to judge of what you are about. And the trying to 
copy these plates will be good for you, because it will awaken 
you to the real labour and skill of the engraver, and make you 


282 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


uuderstand a little how people must work, in this world, who 
have really to do anything in it. 

Do not, however, suppose that I give you the engraving as 
a model—far from it; but it is necessary you should be able 
to do as well * before you think of doing better, and you will 
find many little helps and hints in the various work of it. 
Only remember that all engravers’ foregrounds are bad ; 
whenever you see the peculiar wriggling parallel lines of mod- 
ern engravings become distinct, you must not copy; nor ad- 
mire: itis only the softer masses, and distances ; and portions 
of the foliage in the plates marked /, which you may copy. 
The best for this purpose, if you can get it, is the “Chain 
bridge over the Tees,” of the England series ; the thicket on 
the right is very beautiful and instructive, and very like 
Turner. The foliage in the “ Ludlow” and “Powis” is also 
remarkably good. 

Besides these line engravings, and to protect you from what 
harm there is in their influence, you are to provide yourself, if 
possible, with a Rembrandt etching, or a photograph of one 
(of figures, not landscape). It does not matter of what sub- 
ject, or whether a sketchy or finished one, but the sketchy 
ones are generally cheapest, and will teach you most. Copy 
it as well as you can, noticing especially that Rembrandt's 
most rapid lines have steady purpose; and that they are laid 
with almost inconceivable precision when the object becomes. 
at all interesting. The ‘“ Prodigal Son,” ‘Death of the Vir- 
ein,” “Abraham and Isaac,” and such others, containing in- 
cident and character rather than chiaroscuro, will be the most 
instructive. You can buy one; copy it well; then exchange 
it, at little loss, for another ; and so, gradually, obtain a good 
knowledge of his system. Whenever you have an opportunity 
of examining his work at museums, &c., do so with the great- 
est care, not looking at many things, but a long time at each. 
You must also provide yourself, if possible, with an engraving 
of Albert Durer’s, This you will not be able to copy; but 

* As well ;—not as minutely: the diamond cuts finer lines on the steel 


than you can draw on paper with your pen; but you must be able to 
get tones as even, and touches as firm. 


ON FIRST PRACTICE. 283 


you must keep it beside you, and refer to it as a standard of 
precision in line. If you can get one with a wing in it, it will 
be best. The crest with the cock, that with the skull and 
satyr, and the ‘‘ Melancholy,” are the best you could have, but 
any will do. Perfection in chiaroscuro drawing lies between 
these two masters, Rembrandt and Durer. Rembrandt is 
often too loose and vague ; and Durer has little or no effect of 
mist or uncertainty. If you can see anywhere a drawing by 
Leonardo, you will find it balanced between the two charac- 
ters ; but there are no engravings which present this perfec- 
tion, and your style will be best formed, therefore, by alter- 
nate study of Rembrandt and Durer. Lean rather to Durer ; 
it is better for amateurs to err on the side of precision than 
on that of vagueness: and though, as I have just said, you 
cannot copy a Durer, yet try every now and then a quarter of 
an inch square or so, and see how much nearer you can come ; 
you cannot possibly try to draw the leafly crown of the ‘‘ Mel- 
ancholia ” too often. 

If you cannot get either a Rembrandt or a Durer, you may 
still learn much by carefully studying any of George Cruik- 
shank’s etchings, or Leech’s woodcuts in Punch, on the free 
side ; with Alfred Rethel’s and Richter’s * on the severe side. 
But in so doing you will need to notice the following points : 

When either the material (as the copper or wood) or the 
time of an artist, does not permit him to make a perfect draw- 
ing,—that is to say, one in which no lines shall be prominently 
visible,—and he is reduced to show the black lines, either 
drawn by the pen, or on the wood, it is better to make these 
lines help, as far as may be, the expression of texture and 
form. You will thus find many textures, as of cloth or grass 
or flesh, and many subtle effects of light, expressed by Leech 
with zigzag or crossed or curiously broken lines; and you 
will see that Alfred Rethel and Richter constantly express the 
direction and rounding of surfaces by the direction of the 
lines which shade them. All these various means of expression 
will be useful to you, as far as you can learn them, provided 


*See, for account of these plates, the Appendix on ‘‘ Works to be 
studied.” 


284 THE KLEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


you remember that they are merely a kind of shorthand ; tell- 
ing certain facts, not in quite the right way, but in the only 
possible way under the conditions : and provided in any after 
use of such means, you never try to show your own dexterity ; 
but only to get as much record of the object as you can in a 
given time ; and that you continually make efforts to go be- 
yond shorthand, and draw portions of the objects rightly. 

And touching this question of direction of lines as indicating 
that of surface, observe these few points: 

If lines are to be distinctly shown, it is better that, so far as 
they can indicate any thing by their direction, they should ex- 
plain rather than oppose the general character of the object. 


Ys 





Thus, in the piece of woodcut from Titian, Fig. 10., the lines 
are serviceable by expressing, not only the shade of the trunk, 
but partly also its roundness, and the flow of its grain. And 
Albert Durer, whose work was chiefly engraving, sets himself 
always thus to make his lines as valuable as possible; telling 
much by them, both of shade and direction of surface: and if 
you were always to be limited to engraving on copper (and did 
not want to express effects of mist or darkness, as well as deli- 
cate forms), Albert Durer’s way of work would be the best ex- 
ample for you. But, inasmuch as the perfect way of drawing 
is by shade without lines, and the great painters always con- 
ceive their subject as complete, even when they are sketching 


ON FIRST PRACTICE. 285 


it most rapidly, you will find that, when they are not limited 
in means, they do not much trust to direction of line, but will 
often scratch in the shade of a rounded surface with neariy 
straight lines, that is to say, with the easiest and quickest lines 


possible to themselves. 
When the hand is free, 
the easiest line for it to 
draw is one inclining 
from the left upward to 
the right, or vice versd, 
from the right down- 
wards to the left; and 
when done very quick- 
ly, the line is hooked 
a little at the end by 
the effort at return to 
the next. Hence, you 
will always find the pen- 
cil, chalk, or pen sketch 
of a very great master 
full of these kind of 
lines; and even if he 
draws carefully, you will 
find him using simple 
straight lines from left to 
right, when an inferior 
master will have used 
curved ones. Fig. 11. is 
a fair facsimile of part 
of a sketch of Raphael's, 
which exhibits these 
characters very distinct- 


‘ 
S\\P 







“Se i | 
ad | 
: 


Ly 





TS 


AS 
. 


\ 


ly. Hven the careful drawings of Leonardo da Vinci are 
shaded most commonly with straight lines; and you may 
always assume it as a point increasing the probability of a 
drawing being by a great master if you find rounded surfaces, 
such as those of cheeks or lips, shaded with straight lines. 
But you will also now understand how easy it must be for 


286 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


dishonest dealers to forge or imitate scrawled sketches like 
Figure 11., and pass them for the work of great masters ; and 
how the power of determining the genuineness of a drawing 
depends entirely on your knowing the facts of the object 
drawn, and perceiving whether the hasty handling is all con- 
ducive to the expression of those truths. In a great man’s 
work, at its fastest, no line is thrown away, and it is not by 
the rapidity, but the economy of the execution that you know 
him to be great. Now to judge of this economy, you must 
know exactly what he meant to do, otherwise you cannot of 
course discern how far he has done it; that is, you must know 
the beauty and nature of the thing he was drawing. All judg- 
ment of art thus finally founds itself on knowledge of Nature. 

But farther observe, that this scrawled, or economic, or im- 
petuous execution is never affectedly impetuous. If a great 
man is not in a hurry, he never pretends to be; if he has no 
eagerness in his heart, he puts none into his hand; if he 
thinks his effect would be better got with é¢wo lines, he never, 
to show his dexterity, tries to do it with one. Be assured, 
therefore (and this is a matter of great importance), that you 
will never produce a great drawing by imitating the execution 
of a great master. Acquire his knowledge and share his feel- 
ings, and the easy execution will fall from your hand as it did 
from his; but if you merely scrawl because he scrawled, or 
blot because he blotted, you will not only never advance in 
power, but every able draughtsman, and every judge whose 
opinion is worth having, will know you for a cheat, and de- 
spise you accordingly. 

Again, observe respecting the use of outline: 

All merely outlined drawings are bad, for the simple reason, 
that an artist of any power can always do more, and tell more, 
by quitting his outlines occasionally, and scratching in a few 
lines for shade, than he can by restricting himself to outline 
only. Hence the fact of his so restricting himself, whatever 
may be the occasion, shows him to be a bad draughtsman, 
and not to know how to apply his power economically. This 
hard law, however, bears only on drawings meant to remain 
in the state in which you see them ; not on those which were 


ON FIRST PRACTICE. 287 


meant to be proceeded with, or for some mechanical use. It 
is sometimes necessary to draw pure outlines, as an incipient 
arrangement of a composition, to be filled up afterwards with 
colour, or to be pricked through and used as patterns or 
tracings; but if, with no such ultimate object, making the 
drawing wholly for its own sake, and meaning it to remain in 
the state he leaves it, an artist restricts himself to outline, he 
is a bad draughtsman, and his work is bad. There is no ex- 
ception to this law. A good artist habitually sees masses, not 
edges, and can in every case make his drawing more expres- 
sive (with any given quantity of work) by rapid shade than by 
contours ; so that all good work whatever is more or less 
touched with shade, and more or less interrupted as outline. 
Hence, the published works of Retsch, and all the English 
imitations of them, and all outline engravings from pictures, 
are bad work, and only serve to corrupt the public taste, and 
of such outlines, the worst are those which are darkened in 
some part of their course by way of expressing the dark side, 
as Flaxman’s from Dante, and such others; because an out- 
line can only be true so long as it accurately represents the 
form of the given object with one of its edges. 
Thus, the outline a and the outline b, Fig. 12.,are % & 
both true outlines of a ball ; because, however thick KS) Q 
the line may be, whether we take the interior or 
exterior edge of it, that edge of it always draws a Q 
true circle. But c is a false outline of a ball, be- 
cause either the inner or outer edge of the black line 
must be an untrue circle, else the line could not be thicker in 
one place than another. Hence all “ force,” as it is called, is 
gained by faisification of the contours ; so that no artist whose 
eye is true and fine could endure to look at it. It does indeed 
often happen that a painter, sketching rapidly, and trying again 
and again for some line which he cannot quite strike, blackens 
or loads the first line by setting others beside and across it ; and 
then a careless observer supposes it has been thickened on 
purpose ; or, sometimes also, at a place where shade is after- 
wards to enclose the form, the painter will strike a broad dash 
of this shade beside his outline at once, looking as if he meant 


Cg 
Fi@. 12. 


288 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


to thicken the outline ; whereas this broad line is only the 
first instalment of the future shadow, and the outline is real- 
ly drawn with its inner edge. And thus, far from good 
draughtsmen darkening the lines which turn away from the 
light, the tendency with them is rather to darken them to- 
wards the light, for it is there in general that shade will 
ultimately enclose them. The best example of this treatment 
that I know is Raphael’s sketch, in the Louvre, of the head of 
the angel pursuing Heliodorus, the one that shows part of the 
left eye; where the dark strong lines which terminate the 
nose and forehead towards the light are opposed to tender 
and light ones behind the ear, and in other places towards 
the shade. You will see in Fig. 11. the same principle 
variously exemplified ; the principal dark lines, in the head 
and drapery of the arms, being on the side turned to the 
light. : | 

All these refinements and ultimate principles, however, do 
not affect your drawing for the present. You must try to 
make your outlines as equal as possible ; and employ pure 
outline only for the two following purposes: either (1.) to 
steady your hand, as in Exercise IL, for if you cannot draw 
the line itself, you will never be able to terminate your shadow 
in the precise shape required, when the line is absent; or (2.) 
to give you shorthand memoranda of forms, when you are 
pressed for time. Thus the forms of distant trees in groups 
are defined, for the most part, by the light edge of the round- 
ed mass of the nearer one being shown against the darker 
part of the rounded mass of a more distant one ; and to draw 
this properly, nearly as much work is required to round each 
tree as to round the stone in Fig. 5. Of course you cannot 
often get time to do this ; but if you mark the terminal line 
of each tree as is done by Durer in Fig. 13., you will get a 
most useful memorandum of their arrangement, and a very 
interesting drawing. Only observe in doing this, you must 
not, because the procedure is a quick one, hurry that proced- 
ure itself. You will find, on copying that bit of Durer, that 
every one of his lines is firm, deliberate, and accurately 
descriptive as far as it goes. It means a bush of such a size 


ON FIRST PRACTICE. 289 


and such a shape, definitely observed and set down ; it con- 
tains a true ‘‘signalement” of every nut-tree, and apple-tree, 
and higher bit of hedge, all round that village. If you have 
not time to draw thus carefully, do not draw at. all—you are 
merely wasting your work and spoiling your taste. When 
you have had four or five years’ practice you may be able to 
make useful memoranda at a rapid rate, but not yet; except 
sometimes of light and shade, in a way of which I will tell 
you presently. And this use of outline, note farther, is wholly 
‘sonfined to objects which have edges or limits. You can out: 


























rn a,” 


“4 ase _ 
Bs) aor ‘ai 2h Pa Rabe 1 aie 











wry 
rT > xe >): aT ay ay) ac— Oh SiS MiG sas r one 
1:0 en a Ne in ae oe, oe 
Ly GAY p AD au oa DEAS SNE ths 
ey oe = ee 
(SAP Ip ae % ad | 
st “s are f) ARENA ' 







S|. Paani at osock = a2 
FH 
inl * Bee 
7) A 
3 oo 
eA | | Appel 
in? 


il iy fh ONES, 
Ho an oN VWs nie = 
oe Wh RO eS S 
ge HAY <5 G 


Fie. 13, 


line a tree or a stone, when it rises against another tree or 
stone ; but you cannot outline folds in drapery, or waves in 
water ; if these are to be expressed at all it must be by some 
sort of shade, and therefore the rule that no good drawing can 
consist throughout of pure outline remains absolute. You 
see, in that woodcut of Durer’s, his reason for even limiting 
himself so much to outline as he has, in those distant woods 
and plains, is that he may leave them in bright light, to be 
thrown out stili more by the dark sky and the dark village 
spire ; and the scene becomes real and sunny ecnly by the ad- 
dition of these shades. 


290 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


Understanding, then, thus much of the use of outline, we 
will go back to our question about tree drawing left un- 
answered at page 60. 

We were, you remember, in pursuit of mystery among the 
leaves. Now, it is quite easy to obtain mystery and disorder, 
to any extent; but the difficulty is to keep organisation in 
the midst of mystery. And you will never succeed in doing 
this unless you lean always to the definite side, and allow your- 
self rarely to become quite vague, at least through all your 





Fra. 14, 


early practice. So, after your single groups of leaves, your 
first step must be to conditions like Figs. 14. and 15., which 
are careful facsimiles of two portions of a beautiful woodcut 
of Durer’s, the Flight into Egypt. Copy these carefully,—. 
never mind how little at a time, but thoroughly ; then trace 
the Durer, and apply it to your drawing, and do not be con- 
tent till the one fits the other, else your eye is not true enough 
to carry you safely through meshes of real leaves. And in 
the course of doing this, you will find that not a line nor dot 
of Durer’s can be displaced without harm ; that all add to 


ON FIRST PRACTICE. 291 


the effect, and either express something, or illumine some- 
thing, or relieve something. If, afterwards, you copy any of 
the pieces of modern tree drawing, of which so many rich 
examples are given constantly in our cheap illustrated periodi- 
cals (any of the Christmas numbers of last year’s //lustrated 
News or Times are full of them), you will see that, though 
good and forcible general effect is produced, the lines are 





thrown in by thousands without special intention, and might 
just as well go one way as another, so only that there be 
enough of them to produce all together a well-shaped eftect 
of intricacy: and you will find that a little careless scratch- 
ing about with your pen will bring you very near the same 
result without an effort; but that no scratching of pen, nor 
any fortunate chance, nor anything but downright skill and 
thought, will imitate so much as one leaf of Durer’s. Yet 


292 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


there is considerable intricacy and glittering confusion in the 
interstices of those vine leaves of his, as well as of the grass. 

When you have got familiarised to this firm manner, you 
may draw from Nature as much as you like in the same way ; 
and when you are tired of the intense care required for this, 
you may fall into a little more easy massing of the leaves, asin 
Fig. 10. p. 66.) This is facsimiléd from an engraving after 
Titian, but an engraving not quite first-rate in manner, the 
leaves being a little too formal; still, it is a good enough 
model for your times of rest ; and when you cannot carry the 
thing even so far as this, you may sketch the forms of the 
masses, as in Fig. 16.,* taking care always to have thorough 
command over your hand ; that is, not to let the mass take a 
free shape because your hand ran glibly over the paper, but 
because in nature it has actually a free and noble shape, and 
you have faithfully followed the same. 

And now that we have come to questions of noble shape, as 
well as true shape, and that we are going to draw from nature 
at our pleasure, other considerations enter into the business, 
which are by no means confined to jirst practice, but extend 
to all practice ; these (as this letter is long enough, I should 
think, to satisfy even the most exacting of correspondents) I 
will arrange in a second letter; praying you only to excuse 
the tiresomeness of this first one—tiresomeness inseparable 
from directions touching the beginning of any art,—and to 
believe me, even though I am trying to set you to dull and 
hard work. 

Very faithfully yours, 
J. Ruskin. 


*This sketch is not of a tree standing on its head, though it looks like 
it. You will find it explained presently. | 


SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 293 


LETTER IL 
SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 


My pear Reaper :— 

The work we have already gone through together has, I 
hope, enabled you to draw with fair success, either rounded 
and simple masses, like stones, or complicated arrangements 
of form, like those of leaves ; provided only these masses or 
complexities will stay quiet for you to copy, and do not ex- 
tend into quantity so great as to baffle your patience. But if 
we are now to go out to the fields, and to draw anything like 
a complete landscape, neither of these conditions will any 
more be observed for us. The clouds will not wait while we 
copy their heaps or clefts; the shadows will escape from us 
as we try to shape them, each, in its stealthy minute march, 
still leaving light where its tremulous edge had rested the 
moment before, and involving in eclipse objects that had 
seemed safe from its influence; and instead of the small 
clusters of leaves which we could reckon point by point, em- 
barrassing enough even though numerable, we have now 
leaves as little to be counted as the sands of the sea, and 
restless, perhaps, as its foam. 

In all that we have to do now, therefore, direct imitation 
becomes more or less impossible. It is always to be aimed 
at so far as it 7s possible; and when you have time and op- 
portunity, some portions of a landscape may, as you gain 
ereater skill, be rendered with an approximation almost to 
mirrored portraiture. Still, whatever skill you may reach, 
there will always be need of judgment to choose, and of speed 
to seize, certain things that are principal or fugitive ; and you 
must give more and more effort daily to the observance of 
characteristic points, and the attainment of concise methods. 

I have directed your attention early to foliage for two 
reasous. First, that it is always accessible as a study ; and 
secondly, that its modes of growth present simple examples 


294 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


of the importance of leading or governing lines. It is by 

seizing these leading lines, when we cannot seize ali, that like- 

ness and expression are given to a portrait, and grace and a 

kind of vital truth to the rendering of every natural form. I 
call it vital truth, because these chief lines are always ex- 
pressive of the past history and present action of the thing.” 
They show in a mountain, first, how it was built or heaped 
up; and secondly, how it is now being worn away, and from 
what quarter the wildest storms strike it. In a tree, they 
show what kind of fortune it has had to endure from its - 
childhood ; how troublesome trees have come in its way, and 
pushed it aside, and tried to strangle or starve it ; where and 
when kind trees have sheltered it, and grown up lovingly 
together with it, bending as it bent; what winds torment it 
most ; what boughs of it behave best, and bear most fruit ; 
and soon. Ina wave or cloud, these leading lines show the 
run of the tide and of the wind, and the sort of change which 
the water or vapour is at any moment enduring in its form, as 
it meets shore, or counterwave, or melting sunshine. Now 
remember, nothing distinguishes great men from inferior 
men more than their always, whether in life or in art, knowing 
the way things are going. Your dunce thinks they are stand- 
ing still, and draws them all fixed ; your wise man sees the 
change or changing in them, and draws them so—the animal 
in its motion, the tree in its growth, the cloud in its ¢ourse, 
the mountain in its wearing away. ‘Try always, whenever you 
look at a form, to see the lines in it which have had power 
over its past fate, and will have power over its futurity. Those 
are its awful lines ; see that you seize on those, whatever else 
you miss. Thus, the leafage in Fig. 16. (p. 291.) grew round 
the root of a stone pine, on the brow of a crag at Sestri, near 
Genoa, and all the sprays of it are thrust away in their first 
budding by the great rude root, and spring out in every 
direction round it, as water splashes when a heavy stone is 
thrown into it. Then, when they have got clear of the root, 
they begin to bend up again ; some of them, being little stone 
pines themselves, have a great notion of growing upright, if 
they can ; and this struggle of theirs to recover their straight 


SKATCHING FROM NATURE. 295 


2 


road towards the sky, after being obliged to grow sideways 
in their early years, is the effort that will mainly influence 
their future destiny, and determine if they are to be crabbed, 
forky pines, striking from that rock of Sestri, whose clefts 
nourish them, with bared red lightning of angry arms towards 
the sea; or if they are to be goodly and solemn pines, with 
trunks like pillars of temples, and the purple burning of their 
branches sheathed in deep globes of cloudy green. Those, 
then, are their fateful lines ; see that you give that spring and 
resilience, whatever you leave ungiven: depend upon it, their 
chief beauty is in these. 

So in trees in general and bushes, large or small, you will 
notice that, though the boughs spring irregularly and at vari- 
ous angles, there is a tendency in all to stoop less and less as 
they near the top of the tree. This structure, typified in the 
simplest possible terms at 
ce, Fig. 17., is common to 
all trees, that I know of, 


and it gives them a certain 
plumy character, and as- 
pect of unity in the hearts 


of their branches, which are ¢ 
essential to their beauty. 

The stem does not merely send off a wild branch here and 
there to take its own way, but all the branches share in one 
ereat fountain-like impulse; each has a curve and a path to 
take which fills a definite place, and each terminates all its 
minor branches at its outer extremity, so as to form a great 
outer curve, whose character and proportion are peculiar for 
each species ; that is to say, the general type or idea ofa tree 
is not as a, Fig. 17., but as }, in which, observe, the boughs 
all carry their minor divisions right out to the bounding 
curve; not but that smaller branches, by thousands, ter- 
minate in the heart of the tree, but the idea and main pur- 
pose in every branch are to carry all its child branches 
well out to the air and light, and let each of them, however 
small, take its part in filling the united flow of the bounding 
curve, so that the type of each separate bough is again not a, 





b ¢ 
Fic. 17%. 


296 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


but b, Fig. 18. ; approximating, that-.is to say, so far to the 
structure of a plant of broccoii as to throw the great mass of 
spray and leafage out to a rounded surface ; therefore, beware 
of getting into a care- 

less habit of drawing 

boughs with succes- 

sive sweeps of the pen 

or brush, one hanging 

5 to the other, asin Fig. 

Fie, 18 19. If you look at 
the tree-boughs inany 

painting of Wilson’s, you willsee this structure, and nearly every 
other that is to be avoided, in their intensest types. You will 
also notice that Wilson never conceives a tree asa round mass, 
but flat, as if it had been pressed and dried. Most people, in 
drawing pines, seem to fancy, in the same way, that the boughs 
come out only on two sides of 
the trunk, instead of all round 
it; always, therefore, take more 
pains in trying to draw the 
boughs of trees that grow fo- 
wards you, than those that go 
off to the sides; anybody can 
draw the latter, but the fore- 
shortened onesare not so easy. It will help you in drawing them 
to observe that in most trees the ramification of each branch, 
though not of the tree itself, is more or less flattened, and 
approximates, in its position, to the look of a hand held out 
to receive something, or shelter something. If you take a 
looking-glass, and hold your hand before it slightly hollowed, 
with the palm upwards, and the fingers open, as if you were 
going to support the base of some great bowl, larger than you 
could easily hold, and sketch your hand as you see it in the 
elass, with the points of the fingers towards you, it will ma- 
terially help you in understanding the way trees generally 
hold out their hands; and if then you will turn yours with its 
palm downwards, as if you were going to try to hide some- 
thing, but with the fingers expanded, you will get a good type 


Fie, 19. 


SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 297 


of the action of the lower boughs in cedars and such other 
spreading trees. 
Fig. 20. will give you a good idea of the simplest way in 





Fm 
an EEN eae gd 
Es 


Fra. 20. 


which these and other such facts can be rapidly expressed ; if 
you copy it carefully, you will be surprised to find how the 
touches all group together, in expressing the plumy toss of the 
tree branches, and the springing of the bushes out of the bank, 


298 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


and the undulation of the ground : note the careful drawing of . 
the footsteps made by the climbers of the little mound on the 
left.* It is facsimiléd from an etching of Turner’s, and is as 
cood an example as you can have of the use of pure and firm 
lines ; it will also show you how the particular action in foli- 
age, or anything else to which you wish to direct attention, 
may be intensified by the adjuncts. The tall and upright trees 
are made to look more tall and upright still, because their line 
is continued below by the figure of the farmer with his stick ; 
and the rounded bushes on the bank are made to look more 
rounded because their line is continued in one broad sweep 
by the black dog and the boy climbing the wall. These fig- 
ures are placed entirely with this object, as we shall see more 
fully hereafter when we come to talk about composition ; but, 
if you please, we will not talk about that yet awhile. What I 
have been telling you about the beautiful lines and action of 
foliage has nothing to do with composition, but only with fact, 
and the brief and expressive representation of fact. But there 
will be no harm in your looking forward, if you like to do so, 
to the account, in Letter III. of the ‘‘ Law of Radiation,” and 
reading what it said there about tree growth : indeed it would 
in some respects have been better to have said it here than 
there, only it would have broken up the account of the princi- 
ples of composition somewhat awkwaidly. 

Now, although the lines indicative of action are not always 
quite so manifest in other things as in trees, a little attention 
will soon enable you to see that there are such lines in ey- 
erything. In an old house roof, a bad observer and bad ~ 
draughtsman will only see and draw the spotty irregularity of 
tiles or slates all over ; but a good draughtsman will see all the 
bends of the under timbers, where they are weakest and the 
weight is telling on them most, and the tracks of the run of the 
water in time of rain, where it runs off fastest, and where it 
lies long and feeds the moss ; and he will be careful, however 
few slates he draws, to mark the way they bend together to- 
wards those holiows (which have the future fate of the roof in 
them), and crowd gradually together at the top of the gable, 

* It is meant, I believe, for ‘*Salt Hill.” 


SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 299 


partly diminishing in perspective, partly, perhaps, diminished 
on purpose (they are so in most English old houses) by the 
slate-layer. So in ground, there isalways the direction of the 
run of the water to be noticed, which rounds the earth and euts 
it into hollows ; and, generally, in any bank, or height worth 
drawing, a trace of bedded or other internal structure besides. 
The figure 20. will give you some idea of the way in which 
such facts may be expressed by a few lines. Do you not feel 
the depression in the ground all down the hill where the foot- 
steps are, and how the people always turn to the left at the 
top, losing breath a little, and then how the water runs down 
in that other hollow towards the valley, behind the roots of 
the trees ? 

Now, I want you in your first sketches from nature to aim 
exclusively at understanding and representing these vital facts 
of form; using the pen—not now the steel, but the quill— 
firmly and steadily, never scrawling with it, but saying to your- 
self before you lay on a single touch,—‘“ 7hat leaf is the main 
one, that bough is the guiding one, and this touch, so long, so 
broad, means that part of it,’—point or side or knot, as the 
case may be. Jesolve always, as you look at the thing, what 
you wili take, and what miss of it, and never let your hand run 
away with you, or get into any habit or method of touch. If 
you want a continuous line, your hand should pass calmly from 
one end of it to the other, without a tremor; if you want a 
shaking and broken line, your hand should shake, or break off, 
as easily as a musician’s finger shakes or stops on a note: only 
remember this, that there is no general way of doing any thing; 
no recipe can be given you for so much as the drawing of a 
cluster of grass. The grass may be ragged and stiff, or tender 
and flowing ; sunburnt and sheep-bitten, or rank and languid ; 
fresh or dry ; lustrous or dull: look at it, and try to draw it 
as it is, and don’t think how somebody “told you to do grass.” 
So a stone may be round and angular, polished or rough, 
cracked all over like an ill-glazed teacup, or as united and 
broad as the breast of Hercules. It may beas flaky as a wafer, 
as powdery as a field puff-ball ; it may be knotted like a ship’s 
hawser, or kneaded like hammered iron, or knit like a Damas- 


300 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


cus sabre, or fused like a glass bottle, or crystallised like a hoar- 
frost, or veined like a forest leaf: look at it, and don’t try to 
remember how anybody told you to “do a stone.” 

As soon as you find that your hand obeys you thoroughly, 
and that you can render any form with a firmness and truth 
approaching that of Turner’s and Durer’s work,* you must add 
a simple but equally careful light and shade to your pen draw- 
ing, so as to make each study as complete as possible: for 
which you must prepare yourself thus. Get, if you have the 
means, a good impression of one plate of Turner’s Liber Studi- 
orum ; if possible, one of the subjects named in the note below.+ 

* I do not mean that you can approach Turner or Durer in their 
strength, that is to say, in their imagination or power of design. But 


you may approach them, by perseverance, in truth of manner. 
+ The following are the most desirable plates : 


Grande Chartreuse. Pembury Mill. 

Aisacus and Hespérie. Little Devil’s Bridge. 

Cephalus and Procris. River Wye (not Wye and Severn). 
Source of Arveron. Holy Island. 

Ben Arthur. Clyde. 

Watermill. Lauffenbourg. 

Hindhead Hill. Blair Athol. 

Hedging and Ditching. Alps from Grenoble. 

Dumblane Abbey. Raglan, (Subject with quiet brook, 
Morpeth. | trees, and castle on the right.) 


Calais Pier. 
If you cannot get one of these, any of the others will he serviceable, 
except only the twelve following, which are quite useless :— 
1. Scene in Italy, with goats on a walled road, and trees above. 
2. Interior of church. . 
3. Scene with bridge, and trees above ; figures on left, one playing @ 
pipe. 
- 4, Scene with figure playing on tambourine. 
5. Scene on Thames with high trees, and a square tower of a church 
seen through them. 
6. Fifth Plague of Egypt. 
7. Tenth Plague of Egypt. 
8. Rivaulx Abbey. 
9. Wye and Severn. 
10. Scene with castle in centre, cows under trees on the left. 
11. Martello Towers. 
12. Calm. 
It is very unlikely that you should meet with one of the original etch- 


SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 301 


If you cannot obtain, or even borrow for a little while, any of 
these engravings, you must use a photograph instead (how, 
I will tell you presently); but, if you can get the Turner, 
it will be best.. You will see that it is composed of a firm 
etching in line, with mezzotint shadow laid overit. You must 
first copy the etched part of it accurately ; to.which end put 
the print against the window, and trace slowly with the great- 
est care every black line; retrace this on smooth drawine- 
paper ; and, finally, go over the whole with your pen, looking 
at the original plate always, so that if you err at all, it may 
be on the right side, not making a line which is too curved 
or too straight already in the tracing, more curved or more 
straight, as you go over it. And in doing this, never work 
after you are tired, nor to “ get the thing done,” for if it is 
badly done, it will be of no use to you. The true zeal and 
patience of a quarter of an hour are better than the sulky and 
inattentive labour of a whole day. If you have not made the 
touches right at the first going over with the pen, retouch 
them delicately, with little ink in your pen, thickening or rein- 


ings; if you should, it will be a drawing-master in itself alone, for it is 
not only equivalent to a pen-and-ink drawing by Turner, but to a very 
careful one: only observe, the Source of Arveron, Raglan, and Dum- 
blane were not etched by Turner; and the etchings of those three are 
not good for separate study, though it is deeply interesting to see how 
Turner, apparantly provoked at the failure of the beginnings in the 
Arveron and Raglan, took the plates up himself, and either conquered 
or brought into use the bad etching by his marvellous engraving. The 
Dumblane was, however, well etched by Mr. Lupton, and beautifully 
engraved by him. The finest Turner etching is of an aqueduct with a 
stork standing in a mountain stream, not in the published series ; and 
next to it, are the unpublished etchings of the Via Mala and Crowhurst. 
Turner seemsto have been so fond of these plates that he kept retouch- 
ing and finishing them, and never made up his mind to let them go. 
The Via Mala is certainly, in the state in which Turner left it, the finest 
of the whole series: its etching is, as I said, the best after that of the 
aqueduct. Figure 20.. above, is part of another fine unpublished etch- 
ing, ‘‘ Windsor, from Salt Hill.” Of the published etchings, the finest 
are the Ben Arthur, Asacus, Cephalus, and Stone Pines, with the Girl 
washing at a Cistern ; the three latter are the more generally instructive. 
Hindhead Hill, Isis, Jason, and Morpeth, are also very desirable. 


302 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


forcing them as they need : you cannot give too much care to 
tlie facsimile. Then keep this etched outline by you, in order 
to study at your ease the way in which Turner uses his line 
as preparatory for the subsequent shadow ;* it is only in get- 
ting the two separate that you will be able to reason on this. 
Next, copy once more, though for the fourth time, any part of 
this etching which you like, and put on the light and shade 
with the brush, and any brown colour that matches that of the 
plate ;+ working it with the point of the brush as delicately as 
if you were drawing with pencil, and dotting and cross-hatching 
as lightly as you can touch the paper, till you get the grada- 
tions of Turner’s engraving. In this exercise, as in the former 
one, a quarter of an inch worked to close resemblance of the 
copy is worth more than the whole subject carelessly done. 
Not that in drawing afterwards from nature, you are to be 
obliged to finish every gradation in this way, but that, once 
having fully accomplished the drawing something rightly, you 
will thenceforward feel and aim ata higher perfection than you 
could otherwise have conceived, and the brush will obey you, 
and bring out quickly and clearly the loveliest results, with a 
submissiveness which it would have wholly refused if you had 
not put it to severest work. Nothing is more strange in art 
than the way that chance and materials seem to favour you, 
when once you have thoroughly conquered them. Make your- 
self quite independent of chance, get your result in spite of it, 
and from that day forward all things will somehow fall as you 
would have them. Show the camel’s-hair, and the colour in 
it, that no bending nor blotting are of any use to escape your 
will ; that the touch and the shade shall finally be right, if it 
cost you a year’s toil ; and from that hour of corrective conyic- 
tion, said camel’s-hair will bend itself to all your wishes, and no 
blot will dare to transgress its appointed border. If you can- 
not obtain a print from the Liber Studiorum, get a photo- 


* You will find more notice of this point in the account of Harding’s 
tree-drawing, a little farther on. 

+ The impressions vary so much in colour that no brown oan be speci- 
fied. 


SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 303 


graph * of some general landscape subject, with high hills anda 
village, or picturesque town, in the middle distance, and some 
calm water of varied character (a stream with stones in it, if 
possible), and copy any part of it youlike, in this same brown 
colour, working, as I have just directed you to do from the 
Liber, a great deal with the point of the brush. You are un- 
der a twofold disadvantage here, however ; first, there are 
portions in every photograph too delicately done for you at 
present to be at all able to copy ; and secondly, there are por- 
tions always more obscure or dark than there would be in the 
real scene, and involved in a mystery which you will not be 
able, as yet, to decipher. Both these characters will be advan- 
tageous to you for future study, after you have gained expe- 
rience, but they are a little against you in early attempts at 
tinting ; still you must fight through the difficulty, and get 
the power of producing delicate gradations with brown or 
grey, like those of the photograph. 

Now observe ; the perfection of work would be tinted shad- 
ow, like photography, without any obscurity or exaggerated 
darkness ; and as long as your effect depends in anywise on 
visible dines, your art is not perfect, though it may be first-rate 
ofits kind. But to get complete results in tints merely, re- 
quires both long time and consummate skill ; and you will find 
that a few well-put pen lines, with a tint dashed over or under 
them, get more expression of facts than you could reach in any 
other way, by the same expenditure of time. The use of the 
Liber Studiorum print to you is chiefly as an example of the 
simplest shorthand of this kind, a shorthand which is yet capa- 
ble of dealing with the most subtle natural effects; for the 
firm etching gets at the expression of complicated details, as 
leaves, masonry, textures of ground, &c., while the overlaid tint 
enables you to express the most tender distances of sky, and 
forms of playing light, mist or cloud. Most of the best draw- 
ings by the old masters are executed on this principle, the 
touches of the pen being useful also to give a look of trans- 
parency to shadows, which could not otherwise be attained 

* You had better get such a photograph, even if you have a Liber 
print as well. 


304 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


but by great finish of tinting; and if you have access to any 
ordinarily good public gallery, or can make friends of any 
printsellers who have folios of old drawings, or facsimiles of 
them, you will not be at a loss to find some example of this 
unity of pen with tinting. Multitudes of photographs also 
are now taken from the best drawings by the old masters, and 
I hope that our Mechanics’ Institutes, and other societies 
organized with a view to public instruction, will not fail to 
possess themselves of examples of these, and to make them 
accessible to students of drawing in the vicinity ; a single print 
from Turner’s Liber, to show the unison of tint with pen 
etching, and the “St. Catherine,” lately photographed by 
Thurston Thompson, from Raphael’s drawing in the Louvre, 
to show the unity of the soft tinting of the stump with chalk, 
would be all that is necessary, and would, I believe, be in 
many cases more serviceable than a larger collection, and 
certainly than a whole gallery of second-rate prints. Two 
such examples are peculiarly desirable, because all other 
modes of drawing, with pen separately, or chalk separately, or 
colour separately, may be seen by the poorest student in any 
cheap illustrated book, or in shop windows. But this unity 
of tinting with line he cannot generally see but by some es- 
pecial enquiry, and in some out of the way places he could 
not find a single example of it. Supposing that this should 
be so in your own case, and that you cannot meet with any 
example of this kind, try to make the matter out alone, 
thus: 

Take a small and simple photograph ; allow yourself half an 
hour to express its subjects with the pen only, using some per- 
manent liquid colour instead of ink, outlining its buildings or 
trees firmly, and laying in the deeper shadows, as you have 
been accustomed to do in your bolder pen drawings; then, 
when this etching is dry, take your sepia or grey, and tint it 
over, getting now the finer gradations of the photograph ; and 
finally, taking out the higher lights with penknife or blot- 
ting-paper. You will soon find what can be done in this way ; 
and by a series of experiments you may ascertain for yourself 
how far the pen may be made serviceable to reinforce shadows, 


SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 305 


mark characters of texture, outline unintelligible masses, and 
soon. The more time you have, the more delicate you may 
make the pen drawing, blending it with the tint ; the less you 
have, the more distinct you must keep the two. Practice in 
this way from one photograph, allowing yourself sometimes 
only a quarter of an hour for the whole thing, sometimes an 
hour, sometimes two or three hours ; in each case drawing the 
whole subject in full depth of hght and shade, but with such 
degree of finish in the parts as is possible in the given time. 
And this exercise, observe, you will do well to repeat fre- 
quently whether you can get prints and drawings as well as 
photographs, or not. 

And now at last, when you can copy a piece of Liber Stu- 
diorum, or its photographic substitute, faithfully, you have 
the complete means in your power of working from nature on 
all subjects that interest you, which you should doin four dif- 
ferent ways. 

First. When you have full time, and your subject is one 
that will stay quiet for you, make perfect light and shade 
studies, or as nearly perfect as you can, with grey or brown 
colour of any kind, reinforced and defined with the pen. 

Secondly. When your time is short, or the subject is so rich 
in detail that you feel you cannot complete it intelligibly in 
light and shade, make a hasty study of the effect, and give the 
rest of the time to a Dureresque expression of the details. If 
the subject seems to you interesting, and there are points 
about it which you cannot understand, try to get five spare 
minutes to go close up to it, and make a nearer memorandum ; 
not that you are ever to bring the details of this nearer sketch 
into the farther one, but that you may thus perfect your ex- 
perience of the aspect of things, and know that such and such 
a look of a tower or cottage at five hundred yards off means 
that sort of tower or cottage near; while, also, this nearer 
sketch will be useful to prevent any future misinterpretation 
of your own work. If you have time, however far your light 
and shade study in the distance may have been carried, it is al- 
ways well, for these reasons, to make also your Dureresque 
and your near memoranda ; for if your light and shade draw- 


306 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


ing be good, much of the interesting detail must be lost in it, 
or disguised. ) 

Your hasty study of effect may be made most easily and 
quickly with a soft pencil, dashed over when done with one 
tolerably deep tone of grey, which will fix the pencil. While 
this fixing colour is wet, take out the higher lights with the 
dry brush ; and, when it is quite dry, scratch out the highest 
lights with the penknife. Five minutes, carefully applied, will 
do much by these means. Of course the paper is to be white. 
I do not like studies on grey paper so well; for you can get 
more gradation by the taking off your wet tint, and laying it 
on cunningly a little darker here and there, than you can with 
body-colour white, unless you are consummately skilful. 
There is no objection to your making your Dureresque mem- 
oranda on grey or yellow paper, and touching or relieving 
them with white ; only, do not depend much on your white 
touches, nor make the sketch for their sake. 

Thirdly. When you have neither time for careful study nor 
for Dureresque detail, sketch the outline with pencil, then 
dash in the shadows with the brush boldly, trying to do as 
much as you possibly can at once, and to get a habit of expe- 
dition and decision ; laying more colour again and again into 
the tints as they dry, using every expedient which your prac- 
tice has suggested to you of carrying out your chiaroscuro in 
the manageable and moist material, taking the colour off 
here with the dry brush, scratching out lights in it there with 
the wooden handle of the brush, rubbing it in with your fin- 
gers, drying it off with your sponge, &. Then, when the 
colour is in, take your pen and mark the outline characters 
vigorously, in the manner of the Liber Studiorum. This kind 
of study is very convenient for carrying away pieces of effect 
which depend not so much on refinement as on complexity, 
strange shapes of involved shadows, sudden effects of sky, &e. ; ~ 
and it is most useful as a safeguard against any too servile or 
slow habits which the minute copying may induce in you ; for 
although the endeavour to obtain velocity merely for velocity’s 
sake, and dash for display’s sake, is as baneful as it is despica- 
ble ; there are a velocity and a dash which not only are com- 


SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 307 


patible with perfect drawing, but obtain certain results which 
cannot be had otherwise. And it is perfectly safe for you to 
study occasionally for speed and decision, while your contin- 
ual course of practice is such as to ensure your retaining an 
accurate judgment and a tender touch. Speed, under such 
circumstances, is rather fatiguing than tempting; and you 
will find yourself always beguiled rather into elaboration than 
negligence. 

Fourthly. You will find it of great use, whatever kind of 
landscape scenery you are passing through, to get into the 
habit of making memoranda of the shapes of shadows. You 
will find that many objects of no essential interest in them- 





selves, and neither deserving a finished study, nor a Durer- 
esque one, may yet become of singular value in consequence 
of the fantastic shapes of their shadows ; for it happens often, 
in distant effect, that the shadow is by much a more important 
element than the substance. Thus, in the Alpine bridge, 
Fig. 21., seen within a few yards of it, as in the figure, the 
arrangement of timbers to which the shadows are owing is 
perceptible ; but at half a mile’s distance, in bright sunlight, 
the timbers would not be seen; and a good painter’s expres- 
sion of the bridge would be. merely the large spot, and the 
crossed bars, of pure grey ; wholly without indication of their 


308 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


cause, as in Fig. 22. a; and if we saw it at still greater dis- 
tances, it would appear, as in Fig. 22. b and ec, diminishing at 
last to a strange, unintelligible, spider-like spot of grey on 
the light hill-side. A perfectly great painter, throughout his 
distances, continually reduces his objects 
to these shadow abstracts ; and the singu- 
> lar, and to many persons unaccountable, 
effect of the confused touches in Turner’s 
distances, is owing chiefly to this thorough 
accuracy and intense meaning of the 
shadow abstracts. 

Studies of this kind are easily made 
. when you are in haste, with an F. or HB. 
b ee pencil: it requires some hardness of the 

point to ensure your drawing delicately 

enough when the forms of the shadows are 

very subtle ; they-are sure to be so some- 

where, and are generally so everywhere, 

The pencil is indeed a very precious in- 

c strument after you are master of the pen 

~ and brush, for the pencil, cunningly used, 

eae is both, and will draw a line with the pre- 

cision of the one and the gradation of the other ; nevertheless, 

it is so unsatisfactory to see the sharp touches, on which the 

best of the detail depends, getting gradually deadened by time, 

or to find the places where foree was wanted look shiny, and 

like a fire-grate, that I should recommend rather the steady 

use of the pen, or brush, and colour, whenever time admits of 

it; keeping only a small memorandum-book in the breast- 

pocket, with its well-cut, sheathed pencil, ready for notes on 
passing opportunities: but never being without this. 

Thus much, then, respecting the manner in which you are 
at first to draw from nature. But it may perhaps be service- 
able to you, if I also note one or two points respecting your 
choice of subjects for study, and the best special methods of 
treating some of them ; for one of by no means the least dif- 
ficulties which you have at first to encounter is a peculiar in- 
stinct, common, as far as I have noticed, to all beginners, to 





SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 309 


fix on exactly the most unmanageable feature in the given 
scene. There are many things in every landscape which can 
be drawn, if at all, only by the most accomplished artists ; and 
I have noticed that it is nearly always these which a beginner 
will dash at; or, if not these, it will be something which, 
though pleasing to him in itself, is unfit for a picture, and in 
which, when he has drawn it, he will have little pleasure. As 
some slight protection against this evil genius of beginners, 
the following general warnings may be useful: 

1. Do not draw things that you love, on account of their 
associations ; or at least do not draw them because you love 
them ; but merely when you cannot get anything else to draw. 
If you try to draw places that you love, you are sure to be al- 
ways entangled amongst neat brick walls, iron railings, gravel 
walks, greenhouses, and quickset hedges; besides that you 
will be continually led into some endeavour to make your 
drawing pretty, or complete, which will be fatal to your prog- 
ress. You need never hope to get on, if you are the least 
anxious that the drawing you are actually at work upon 
should look nice when it is done. All you have to care about 
is to make it right, and to learn as much in doing it as possi- 
ble. So then, though when you are sitting in your friend’s 
parlour, or in your own, and have nothing else to do, you may 
draw any thing that is there, for practice ; even the fire-irons 
or the pattern on the carpet: be sure that it is for practice, and 
not because it is a beloved carpet, nor a friendly poker and 
tongs, nor because you wish to please your friend by drawing 
her room. 

Also, never make presents of your drawings. Of course I 
am addressing you as a beginner—a time may come when 
your work will be precious to everybody ; but be resolute not 
to give it away till you know that it is worth something (as 
soon as it is worth anything you will know that it isso). If 
any one asks you for a present of a drawing, send them a 
couple of cakes of colour and a piece of Br istol board : those 
materials are, for the present, of more value in that form than 
if you had spread the one over the other. 

The main reason for this rule is, however, that its observ- 


810 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


ance will much protect you from the great danger of trying ta 
make your drawings pretty. 

2. Never, by choice, draw anything polished ; especially if 
complicated in form. Avoid all brass rods and curtain orna- 
ments, chandeliers, plate, glass, and fine steel. A shining 
knob of a piece of furniture does not matter if it comes in 
your way; but do not fret yourself if it will not look right, 
and choose only things that do not shine. 

3. Avoid all very neat things. They are exceedingly diffi- 
cult to draw, and very ugly when drawn. Choose rough, 
worn, and clumsy-looking things as much as possible ; for in- 
stance, you cannot have a more difficult or profitless study 
than a newly-painted Thames wherry, nor a better study than 
an old empty coal-barge, lying ashore at low-tide: in general, 
everything that you think very ugly will be good for you to 
draw. 

4. Avoid, as much as possible, studies in which one thing 
is seen through another. You will constantly find a thin tree 
standing before your chosen cottage, or between you and the 
turn of the river ; its near branches all entangled with the 
distance. It is intensely difficult to represent this; and 
though, when the tree is there, you must not imaginarily cut 
it down, but do it as well as you can, yet always look for sub- 
jects that fall into definite masses, not into network ; that is, 
rather for a cottage with a dark tree beside it, than for one 
with a thin tree in front of it; rather for a mass of wood, soft, 
blue, and rounded, than for a ragged copse, or confusion of 
intricate stems. 

5. Avoid, as far as possible, country divided by hedges. 
Perhaps nothing in the whole compass of landscape is so 
utterly unpicturesque and unmanageable as the ordinary 
English patchwork of field and hedge, with trees dotted 
over it in independent spots, gnawed straight at the cattle 
line. 4 

Still, do not be discouraged if you find you have chosen ill, 
and that the subject overmasters you. ‘It is much better that 
it should, than that you should think you had entirely mastered 
uw. But at first, and even for some time, you must be pre- 


SKETCHING FROM NATURE, 311 


pared for very discomfortable failure ; which, nevertheless, 
will not be without some wholesome result. 

As, however, I have told you what most definitely to avoid, 
I may, perhaps, help you a little by saying what to seek. In 
general, all banks are beautiful things, and will reward work 
better than large landscapes. If you live in a lowland coun- 
try, you must look for places where the ground is broken to 
the river’s edges, with decayed posts, or roots of trees ; or, if 
by great good luck there should be such things within your 
reach, for remnants of stone quays or steps, mossy mill-dams, 
&c. Nearly every other mile of road in chalk country will 
present beautiful bits of broken bank at its sides ; better in 
form and colour than high chalk cliffs. In woods, one or two 
trunks, with the flowery ground below, are at once the richest 
and easiest kind of study: a not very thick trunk, say nine 
inches or a foot in diameter, with ivy running up it sparingly, 
is an easy, and always a rewarding subject. 

Large nests of buildings in the middle distance are always 
beautiful, when drawn carefully, provided they are not modern 
rows of pattern cottages, or villas with Ionic and Doric por- 
ticos. Any old English village, or cluster of farm-houses, 
drawn with all its ins and outs, and haystacks, and palings, 
is sure to be lovely ; much more a Frenchone. French land- 
scape is generally as much superior to English as Swiss land- 
scape is to French ; in some respects, the French is incom- 
parable. Such scenes as that avenue on the Seine, which I 
have recommended you to buy the engraving of, admit no 
rivalship in their expression of graceful rusticity and cheerful 
peace, and in the beauty of component lines. 

In drawing villages, take great pains with the gardens ; a 
rustic garden is in every way beautiful. If you have time, 
draw all the rows of cabbages, and hollyhocks, and broken 
fences, and wandering eglantines, and bossy roses: you can- 
not have better practice, nor be kept by anything in pure? 
thoughts. 

Make intimate friends of all the brooks in your neighbour- 
hood, and study them ripple by ripple. 

Village churches in England are not often good subjects ; 


312 THE HLEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


there is a peculiar meanness about most of them, and awk- 
wardness of line. Old manor-houses are often pretty. Ruins 
are usually, with us, too prim, and cathedrals too orderly. I 
do not think there is a single cathedral in England from 
which 1t is possible to obtain one subject for an impressive 
drawing. There is always some discordant civility, or jarring 
vergerism about them. 

If you live in a mountain or hill country, your only danger 
is redundance of subject. Be resolved, in the first place, to 
draw a piece of rounded rock, with its variegated lichens, 
quite rightly, getting its complete roundings, and all the pat- 
terns of the lichen in true local colour. Tull you can do this, 
it is of no use your thinking of sketching among hills; but 
when once you have done this, the forms of distant hills will 
be comparatively easy. 

When you have practised for a little time from such of these 
subjects as may be accessible to you, you will certainly find 
difficulties arising which will make you wish more than ever 
for a master’s help: these difficulties will vary according to 
the character of your own mind (one question occurring to 
one person, and one to another), so that it is impossible to 
anticipate them all ; and it would make this too large a book 
if I answered all that I can anticipate ; you must be content to 
work on, in good hope that nature will, in her own time, in- 
terpret to you much for herself; that farther experience on 
your own part will make some difficulties disappear ; and that 
others will be removed by the occasional observation of such 
artists’ work as may come in your way. Nevertheless, I will 
not close this letter without a few general remarks, such as 
may be useful to you after you are somewhat advanced in 
power ; and these remarks may, I think, be conveniently ar- 
ranged under three heads, having reference to the drawing of 
vecetation, water, and skies. 

And, first, of vegetation. You may think, perhaps, we have 
said enough about trees already ; yet if you have done as you 
were bid, and tried to draw them frequently enough, and 
carefully enough, you will be ready by this time to hear a 
little more of them. You will also recollect that we left our 


SKHTCHING FROM NATURE. 313 


question, respecting the mode of expressing intricacy of leaf- 
age, partly unsettled in the first letter. I left it so because I 
wanted you to learn the real structure of leaves, by drawing 
them for yourself, before I troubled you with the most subtle 
considerations as to method in drawing them. And by this 
time, I imagine, you must have found out two principal things, 
universal facts, about leaves; namely, that they always, in 
the main tendencies of their lines, indicate a beautiful diver- 
gence of growth, according to the law of radiation, already 
referred to ;* and the second, that this divergence is never 
formal, but carried out with endless variety of individual line. 
I must now press both these facts on your attention a little 
farther. 

You may perhaps have been surprised that I have not yet 
spoken of the works of J. D. Harding, especially if you happen 
to have met with the passages referring to them in “ Modern 
Painters,” in which they are highly praised. They are deserv- 
edly praised, for they are the only works by a modern 
draughtsman which express in any wise the energy of trees, 
and the laws of growth, of which we have been speaking. 
There are no lithographic sketches which, for truth of general 
character, obtained with little cost of time, at all rival Hard- 
ing’s. Calame, Robert, and the other lithographic landscape 
sketchers are altogether inferior in power, though sometimes 
a little deeper in meaning. But you must not take even 
Harding for a model, though you may use his works for occa- 
sional reference ; and if you can afford to buy his “ Lessons on 
Trees,” + it will be serviceable to you in various ways, and will 
at present help me to explain the point under consideration. 
And it is well that I should illustrate this point by reference 
to Harding’s works, because their great influence on young 
students renders it desirable that their real character should 
be thoroughly understood. 


* See the closing letter in this volume. 

+ Bogue, Fleet Street. If you are not acquainted with Harding's 
works (an unlikely supposition, considering their popularity), and can- 
not meet with the one in question, the diagrams given here will enable 
you to understand all that is neediul for our purposes. 


314 THE HLEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


You will find, first, in the title-page of the ‘‘ Lessons on 
Trees,” a pretty woodcut, in which the tree stems are drawn 
with great truth, and ina very interesting arrangement of lines. 
Plate 1. is not quite worthy of Mr. Harding, tending too much 
to make his pupil, at starting, think everything depends on 
black dots; still the main lines are good, and very charac- 
teristic of tree growth. Then, in Plate 2., we come to the 
point at issue. The first examples in that plate are given to 
the pupil that he may practise from them till his hand gets 
into the habit of arranging lines freely in a similar manner ; 
and they are stated by Mr. Harding to be universal in appli- 
cation ; ‘‘all outlines expressive of foliage,” he says, “ are but 
modifications of them.” ‘They consist of groups of lines, 
more or less resembling our Fig. 23. ; and the characters es- 

pecially insisted upon are, that they 
<—_——=> “tend at their inner ends to acommon 


te v centre ;” that ‘‘ their ends terminate in 

VE C t [are enclosed by] ovoid curves;” and 
that “the outer ends are most em- 
phatic.” 

Now, as thus expressive of the great laws of radiation and 
enclosure, the main principle of this method of execution 
confirms, in a very interesting way, our conclusions respect- 
ing foliage composition. The reason of the last rule, that the 
outer end of the line is to be most emphatic, does- not indeed 
at first appear ; for the line at one end of a natural leaf is not 
more emphatic than the line at the other: but ultimately, in 
Harding’s method, this darker part of the touch stands more 
or less for the shade at the outer extremity of the leaf mass ; 
and, as Harding uses these touches, they express as much of 
tree character as any mere habit of touch can express. But, 
unfortunately, there is another law of tree growth, quite as 
fixed as the law of radiation, which this and all other conven- 
tional modes of execution wholly lose sight of. This second 
law is, that the radiating tendency shall be carried out only 
as a ruling spirit in reconcilement with perpetual individual 
caprice on the part of the separate leaves. So that the mo- 
ment a touch is monotonous, it must be also false, the liberty 


Fie. 23. 


SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 315 


of the leaf individually being just as essential a truth, as its 

unity of growth with its companions in the radiating group. 
It does not matter how small or apparently symmetrical the 

cluster may be, nor how large or vague. You can hardly 


have a more formal one zeman 
EES 
GANS 
d A ey ‘ 


than b in Fig. 9. p. 276., aay) 
nor a less formal one 
than this shoot of Span- 
ish chestnut, shedding 
its leaves, Fig. 24. ; but 
in either of them, even 
the general reader, un- fA, 
practised in any of the ( 
previously recommend- 
ed exercises, must see 


Hi} 
Hy 





lines mixed with the Fia. 24, 


radiating ones, and radiating lines with the wild ones: and 
if he takes the pen and tries to copy either of these ex- 
amples, he will find that neither play of hand to left nor to 
right, neither a free touch nor a firm touch, nor any learnable 
or describable touch whatsoever, will enable him to produce, 
currently, a resemblance of it ; but that he must either draw 
it slowly, or give it up. And (which makes the matter worse 
still) though gathering the bough, and putting it close to you, 
or seeing a piece of near foliage against the sky, you may 
draw the entire outline of the leaves, yet if the spray has light 
upon it, and is ever so little a way off, you will miss, as we 
have seen, a point of a leaf here, and an edge there ; some of 
the surfaces will be confused by glitter, and some spotted 
with shade ; and if you look carefully through this confusion 
for the edges or dark stems which you really can see, and put 
only those down, the result will be neither like Fig. 9. nor 
Tig. 24., but such an interrupted and puzzling piece of work 
as Fig. 25.* 

* T draw this figure (a young shoot of oak) in outline only, it being 
impossible to express the refinements of shade in distant foliage in a 
woodcut. 


316 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


Now, it is in the perfect acknowledgment and expression ° 


of these three laws that all good drawing of landscape consists. 
There is, first, the organic unity; the law, whether of radiation, 
or parallelism, or concurrent action, which rules the masses of 
herbs and trees, of rocks, and clouds, and waves ; secondly, the 
individual liberty of the members subjected to these laws of 
unity ; and, lastly, the mystery under which the separate char- 
acter of each is more or less concealed. 

I say, first, there must be observance of the ruling organic 
law. This is the first distinction between good artists and bad 
artists. Your common sketcher or bad painter puts his leaves 
on the trees as if they were moss tied to sticks ; he cannot see 
the lines of action or growth ; he scatters the shapeless clouds 
over his sky, not perceiving the sweeps of associated curves 





Alb M a <tc } 
y Xp b Nie ELEN 73 
es PEL Sh AN 
aig) Soe ae 


Fie. 25, 


which the real clouds are following as they fly ; and he breaks 
his mountain side into rugged fragments, wholly unconscious 
of the lines of force with which the real rocks have risen, or 
of the lines of couch in which they repose. On the contrary, 
it is the main delight of the great draughtsman to trace these 
laws of government ; and his tendency to error is always in 
the exaggeration of their authority rather than in its denial. 
Secondly, I say, we have to show the individual character 
and liberty of the separate leaves, clouds, or rocks. And here- 
in the great masters separate themselves finally from the 
inferior ones ; for if the men of inferior genius ever express 
law at all, it is by the sacrifice of individuality. Thus, Salva- 
tor Rosa has great perception of the sweep of foliage and 
rolling of clouds, but never draws a single leaflet or mist 


es 


SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 317 


wreath accurately. Similarly, Gainsborough, in his landscape, 
has great feeling for masses of form and harmony of colour; 
but in the detail gives nothing but meaningless touches; not 
even so much as the species of tree, much less the variety of 
its leafage, being ever discernable. Now, although both these 
expressions of government and individuality are essential to 
masterly work, the individuality is the more essential, and the 
more difficult of attainment ; and, therefore, that attainment 
separates the great masters finally from the inferior ones. It 
is the more essential, because, in these matters of beautiful 
arrangement in visible things, the same rules hold that hold 
in moral things. Itisa lamentable and unnatural thing to 
see a number of men subject to no government, actuated by 
no ruling principle, and associated by no common affection : 
but it would be a more lamentable thing still, were it possible 
to see a number of men so oppressed into assimilation as to 
have no more any individual hope or character, no differences 
in aim, no dissimilarities of passion, no irregularities of judg- 
ment ; a society in which no man could help another, since 
none would be feebler than himself; no man admire another, 
since none would be stronger than himself ; no man be grateful 
to another, since by none he could be relieved ; no man rever- 
ence another, since by none he could be instructed ; a society 
in which every soul would be as the syllable of a stammerer. 
instead of the word of a speaker, in which every man would 
walk as in a frightful dream, seeing spectres of himself, in 
everlasting multiplication, gliding helplessly around him in a 
speechless darkness. Therefore it is that perpetual differ- 
ence, play, and change in groups of form are more essential 
to them even than their being subdued by some great gather- 
ing law: the law is needful to them for their perfection and 
their power, but the difference is needful to them for their life. 

And here it may be noted in passing, that if you enjoy the 
pursuit of analogies and types, and have any ingenuity of 
judgment in discerning them, you may always accurately 
ascertain what are the noble characters in a piece of paint- 
ing, by merely considering what are the noble characters 
of man in his association with his fellows. What grace of 


318 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


manner and refinement of habit are in society, grace of 
line and refinement of form are in the association of visi- 
ble objects. What advantage or harm there may be in sharp- 
ness, ruggedness, or quaintness in the dealings or conversa- 
tions of men ; precisely that relative degree of advantage or 
harm there is in them as elements of pictorial composition. 
What power is in liberty or relaxation to strengthen or relieve 
human souls; that power, precisely in the same relative 
degree, play and laxity of line have to strengthen or refresh 
the expression of a picture. And what goodness or greatness 
Wwe can conceive to arise in companies of men, from chastity 
of thought, regularity of life, simplicity of custom, and bal- 
ance of authority ; precisely that kind of goodness and great- 
ness may be given to a picture by the purity of its colour, the 
severity of its forms, and the symmetry of its masses. 

You need not be in the least afraid of pushing these analo- 
gies too far. They cannot be pushed too far; they are so 
precise and complete, that the farther you pursue them, the 
clearer, the more certain, the more useful you will find them. 
They will not fail you in one particular, or in any direction of 
enquiry. There is no moral vice, no moral virtue, which has 
not its precise prototype in the art of painting ; so that you 
may at your will illustrate the moral habit by the art, or the 
art by the moral habit. Affection and discord, fretfulness 
und quietness, feebleness and firmness, luxury and purity, 
pride and modesty, and all other such habits, and every con- 
ceivable modification and mingling of them, may be illustrated, 
with mathematical exactness, by conditions of line and colour ; 
and not merely these definable vices and virtues, but also 
every conceivable shade of human character and passion, from 
the righteous or unrighteous majesty of the king, to the inno- 
cent or faultful simplicity of the shepherd boy. 

The pursuit of this subject belongs properly, however, to 
the investigation of the higher branches of composition, mat- 
ters which it would be quite useless to treat of in this book ; 
and I only allude to them here, in order that you may under- 
stand how the utmost nobleness of art are concerned in this 
minute work, to which I have set you in your beginning of it 


SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 319 


For it is only by the closest attention, and the most noble 
execution, that it is possible to express these varieties of in- 
dividual character, on which all excellence of portraiture de- 
pends, whether of masses of mankind, or of groups of leaves. 
Now you will be able to understand, among other matters, 
wherein consists the excellence, and wherein the shortcoming, 
of the tree-drawing of Harding. It is excellent in so far as it 
fondly observes, with more truth than any other work of the 
kind, the great laws of growth and action in trees: it fails— 
and observe, not in a minor, but in a principal point—because 
it cannot rightly render any one individual detail or incident 
of foliage. And in this it fails, not from mere carelessness or 
incompletion, but of necessity ; the true drawing of detail 
being for evermore impossible to a hand which has contracted 
a habit of execution. The noble draughtsman draws a leaf, 
and stops, and says calmly—That leaf is of such and sucha 
character ; I will give him a friend who will entirely suit him: 
then he considers what his friend ought to be, and having 
determined, he draws his friend. This process may be as 
quick as lightning when the master is great—one of the sons 
of the giants; or it may be slow and timid: but the process 
is always gone through , no touch or form is ever added to 
another by a good painter without a mental determination 
and affirmation. But when the hand has got into a habit, 
leaf No. 1. necessitates leaf No. 2.; you cannot stop, your 
hand is as a horse with the bit in its teeth; or rather is, for 
the time, a machine, throwing out leaves to order and pattern, 
all alike. You must stop that hand of yours, however pain- 
fully ; make it understand that itis not to have its own way 
any more, that it shall never more slip from one touch to 
another without orders ; otherwise it is not you who are the 
master, but your fingers. You may therefore study Hard- 
ing’s drawing, and take pleasure in it ;* and you may properly 
admire the dexterity which applies the habit of the hand so 


* His lithographic sketches, those, for instance, in the Park and the 
Forest, and his various lessons on foliage, possess greater merit than the 
more ambitious engravings in his ‘‘ Principles and Practice of Art.” There 
are many useful remarks, however, dispersed throngh this latter work. 


320 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


well, and produces results on the whole so satisfactory: but 
you must never copy it, otherwise your progress will be at 
once arrested. The utmost you can ever hope to do, would 
be a sketch in Harding’s manner, but of far inferior dexter- 
ity ; for he has given his life’s toil to gain his dexterity, and 
you, I suppose, have other things to work at besides drawing. 
You would also incapacitate yourself from ever understanding 
what truly great work was, or what Nature was; but by the 
earnest and complete study of facts, you will gradually come 
to understand the one and love the other more and more, 
whether you can draw well yourself or not. 

I have yet to say a few words respecting the third law 
above stated, that of mystery ; the law, namely, that nothing 
is ever seen perfectly, but only by fragments, and under vari- 
ous conditions of obscurity.* This last fact renders the vis- 
ible objects of Nature complete as a type of the human nature. 
We have, observe, first, Subordination ; secondly, Individual- 
ity ; lastly, and this not the least essential character, Incom- 
prehensibility ; a perpetual lesson in every serrated point and 
shining vein which escape or deceive our sight among the 
forest leaves, how little we may hope to discern clearly, or 
judge justly, the rents and veins of the human heart; how 
much of all that is round us, in men’s actions or spirits, which 
we at first think we understand, a closer and more loving 
watchfulness would show to be full of mystery, never to be 
either fathomed or withdrawn. 

The expression of this final character in landscape has never 
been completely reached by any except Turner ; nor can you 
hope to reach it at all until you have given much time to the 
practice of art. Only try always when you are sketching any 
object with a view to completion in light and shade, to draw 
only those parts of it which you really see definitely ; preparing 
for the after development of the forms by chiaroscuro. It is 
this preparation by isolated touches for a future arrangement 
of superimposed light and shade which renders the etchings 
of the Liber Studiorum so inestimable as examples and so 


* On this law you will do well, if you can get access to it, to look at 
the fourth chapter of the fourth volume of ‘‘ Modern Painters.” 


SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 321 


peculiar. The character exists more or less in them exactly 
in proportion to the pains that Turner has taken. Thus the 
AXsacus and Hespérie was wrought out with the greatest pos- 
sible care ; and the princi- 
pal branch on the near tree 
is etched as in Fig. 26. The 
work looks at first like a 
scholar’s instead of a mas- 
ter’s; but when the light 
and shade are added, every 
touch falls into its place, 
and a perfect expression of 
grace and complexity re- 
sults. Nay even before the 
light and shade are added, 
you ought to be able to see 
that these irregular and 
broken lines, especially 
where the expression is 
given of the way the stem 
loses itself in the leaves, are 
more true than the monotonous though graceful leaf-drawing 
which, before Turner’s time, had been employed, even by the 
best masters, in their distant masses. Fig. 27. is sufficiently 
characteristic of the manner of the old woodcuts after Titian ; 
in which, you see, the leaves are too much of one shape, like 
bunches of fruit ; and the boughs 
too completely seen, besides be- 
ing somewhat soft and leathery 
in aspect, owing to the want of 
angles in their outline. By great 
men like Titian, this somewhat 
conventional structure was only 
given in haste to distant masses ; 
and their exquisite delineation 
of the foreground, kept their 
conventionalism from degeneracy: but in the drawing of 
the Caracci and other derivative masters, the conventional- 


es 





Fie. 26. 





322 THE HLEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


ism prevails everywhere, and sinks gradually into scrawled 
work, like Fig. 28., about the worst which it is possible to get 
into the habit of using, though an ignorant person might per- 
od suppose it more “free,” and therefore better than Fig. 
Note, also, that in noble outline drawing, it does not 
follow that a bough is wrong- 


ly drawn, because it looks con- 

tracted unnaturally some- 

where, as in Fig. 26., just 

above the fohage. Very often 

the muscular action which is 

to be expressed by the line, 

runs into the middle of the 
branch, and the actual outline 
of the branch at that place may 
be dimly seen, or not at all: 
and it is then only by the 
future shade that its actual 
shape, or the cause of its dis- 

qs Y appearance, will be indicated. 
A One point more remains to 

be noted about trees, and I 
have done. In the minds of our ordinary water-colour artists, 
a distant tree seems only to be conceived as a flat green blot, 
grouping pleasantly with other masses, and giving cool colour 
to the landscape, but differing nowise, in texture, from the 
blots of other shapes, which these painters use to express stones, 
or water, or figures. But as soon as you have drawn trees 
carefully a little while, you will be impressed, and impressed 
more strongly the better you draw them, with the idea of 
their softness of surface. A distant tree is not a flat and even 
piece of colour, but a more or less globular mass of a downy 
or bloomy texture, partly passing into a misty vagueness. I 
find, practically, this lovely softness of far-away trees the most 
difficult of all characters to reach, because it cannot be got by 
mere scratching or roughening the surface, but is always as- 
sociated with such delicate expressions of form and growth 
as are only imitable by very careful drawing. The penknife 


\ 
~ 







Fie 28. 


SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 323 


passed lightly over this careful drawing, will do a good deal ; 
but you must accustom yourself, from the beginning, to aim 
much at this softness in the lines of the drawing itself, by 
crossing them delicately, and more or less effacing and con- 
fusing the edges. You must invent, according to the char- 
acter of tree, various modes of execution adapted to express 
. its texture ; but always keep this character of softness in your 
mind and in your scope of aim ; for in most landscapes it is the 
intention of nature that the tenderness and transparent infini- 
tude of her foliage should be felt, even at the far distance, in the 
most distinct opposition to the solid masses and flat surfaces 
of rocks or buildings. 


II. We were, in the second place, to consider a little the 
modes of representing water, of which important feature of 
landscape I have hardly said anything yet. 

Water is expressed, in common drawings, by conventional 
lines, whose horizontality is supposed to convey the idea of its 
surface. In paintings, white dashes or bars of light are used 
for the same purpose. 

But these and all other such expedients are vain and ab- 
surd. A piece of calm water always contains a picture in it- 
self, an exquisite reflection of the objects above it. If you 
give the time necessary to draw these reflections, disturbing 
them here and there as you see the breeze or current disturb 
them, you will get the effect of the water ; but if you have 
not patience to draw the reflections, no expedient will give 
you a true effect. The picture in the pool needs nearly as 
much delicate drawing as the picture above the pool; except 
only that if there be the least motion on the water, the hori- 
zontal lines of the images will be diffused and broken, while 
the vertical ones will remain decisive, and the oblique ones 
decisive in proportion to their steepness. 

A few close studies will soon teach you this: the only thing 
you need to be told is to watch carefully the lines of disturb- 
ance on the surface, as when a bird swims across it, or a fish 
rises, or the current plays round a stone, reed, or other ob- 
stacle. Take the greatest pains to get the curves of these 


324 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


lines true ; the whole value of your careful drawing of the re- 
flections may be lost by your admitting a single false curve of 
ripple from a wild duck’s breast. And (as in other subjects) 
if you are dissatisfied with your result, always try for more 
unity and delicacy : if your reflections are only soft and gra- 
dated enough, they are nearly sure to give you a pleasant 
effect. When you are taking pains, work the softer reflections, 
where they are drawn out by motion in the water, with 
touches as nearly horizontal as may be ; but when you are in 
a hurry, indicate the place and play of the images with verti- 
cal lines. The actual construction of a calm elongated reflec- 
tion is with horizontal lines: but it is often impossible to draw 
the descending shades delicately enough with a horizontal 
touch; and it is best always when you are in a hurry, and 
sometimes when you are not, to use the vertical touch. When 
the ripples are large, the reflections become shaken, and must 
be drawn with bold undulatory descending lines. 

I need not, I should think, tell you that it is of the greatest 
possible importance to draw the curves of the shore rightly. 
Their perspective is, if not more subtle, at least more strin- 
gent than that of any other lines in Nature. It will not be 
detected by the general observer, if you miss the curve of a 
branch, or the sweep of a cloud, or the perspective of a build- 
ing ;* but every intelligent spectator will feel the difference 
between a rightly drawn bend of shore or shingle, and a false 
one. Absolutely right, in difficult river perspectives seen from 
heights, I believe no one but Turner ever has been yet; and 
observe, there is no rule for them. To develope the curve 
mathematically would require a knowledge of the exact quan- 
tity of water in the river, the shape of its bed, and the hard- 
ness of the rock or shore ; and even with these data, the prob- 
lem would be one which no mathematician could solve but 
approximatively. The instinct of the eye can do it; nothing 
else. ; 

If, after a little study from Nature, you get puzzled by the 

* The student may hardly at first believe that the perspective of build- 


ings is of little consequence: but he will find it so ultimately. See the 
remarks on this point in the Preface, 


SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 325 


great differences between the aspect of the reflected image 
and that of the object casting it ; and if you wish to know the 
law of reflection, it is simply this: Suppose all the objects 
above the water actually reversed (not in appearance, but in 
fact) beneath the water, and precisely the same in form and 
in relative position, only all topsy-turvy. Then, whatever you 
can see, from the place in which you stand, of the solid ob- 
jects so reversed under the water, you will see in the reflec- 
tion, always in the true perspective of the solid objects so re- 
versed. 

If you cannot quite understand this in looking at water, 
take a mirror, lay it horizontally on the table, put some books 
and papers upon it, and draw them and their reflections ; 
moving them about, and watching how their reflections alter, 
and chiefly how their reflected colours and skades differ from 
their own colours and shades, by being brought into other 
oppositions. This difference in chiaroscuro is a more impor- 
tant character in water painting than mere difference in form. 

When you are drawing shallow or muddy water, you will 
see shadows on the bottom, or on the surface, continually 
modifying the refiections; and in a clear mountain stream, 
the most wonderful complications of effect resulting from the 
shadows and reflections of the stones in it, mingling with the 
aspect of the stones themselves seen through the water. Do 
not be frightened at the complexity ; but, on the other hand, 
do not hope to render it hastily. Look at it well, making out 
everything that you see, and distinguishing each component 
part of the effect. There will be, first, the stones seen through 
the water, distorted always by refraction, so that if the gen- 
eral structure of the stone shows straight parallel lines above 
the water, you may be sure they will be bent where they 
enter it ; then the reflection of the part of the stone above the 
water crosses and interferes with the part that is seen through 
it, so that you can hardly tell which is which ; and wherever 
the reflection is darkest, you will see through the water best, 
and vice versd. Then the real shadow of the stone crosses 
both these images, and where that shadow falls, it makes the 
water more reflective, and where the sunshine falls, you will 


326 THE LLEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


see more of the surface of the water, and of any dust or motes 
that may be floating on it: but whether you are to see, at the 
same spot, most of the bottom of the water, or of the reflec- 
tion of the objects above, depends on the position of the eye. 
The more you look down into the water, the better you see 
objects through it ; the more you look along it, the eye being 
low, the more you see the reflection of objects above it. 
Hence the colour of a given space of surface in a stream will 
entirely change while you stand still in the same spot, merely 
as you stoop or raise your head; and thus the colours with 
which water is painted are an indication of the position of the 
spectator, and connected inseparably with the perspective of 
the shores. The most beautiful of all results that I know in 
mountain streams is when the water is shallow, and the stones 
at the bottom are rich reddish-orange and black, and the 
water is seen at an angle which exactly divides the visible 
colours between those of the stones and that of the sky, and 
the sky is of clear, full blue. The resulting purple obtained 
by the blending of the blue and the orange-red, broken by 
the play of innumerable gradations in the stones, is indescrib- 
ably lovely. 

All this seems complicated enough already ; but if there be 
a strong colour in the clear water itself, as of green or blue 
in the Swiss lakes, all these phenomena are doubly involved ; 
for the darker reflections now become of the colour of the 
water. The reflection of a black gondola, for instance, at 
Venice, is never black, but pure dark green. And, farther, 
the colour of the water itself is of three kinds: one, seen on 
the surface, is a kind of milky bloom ; the next is seen where 
the waves let light through them, at their edges; and the 
third, shown as a change of colour onthe objects seen through 
the water. Thus, the same wave that makes a white object 
look of a clear blue, when seen through it, will take a red or 
violet-coloured bloom on its surface, and will be made pure 
emerald green by transmitted sunshine through its edges. 
With all this, however, you are not much concerned at pres- 
ent, but I tell if you partly as a preparation for what we have 
afterwards to say about colour, and partly that you may ap- 


SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 327 


proach lakes and streams with reverence, and study them as 
carefully as other things, not hoping to express them by a 
few horizontal dashes of white, or a few tremulous blots.* 
Not but that much may be done by tremulous blots, when 
you know precisely what you mean by them, as you will see 
by many of the Turner sketches, which are now framed at the 
National Gallery ; but you must have painted water many 
and many a day—yes, and all day long—before you can hope 
to do anything like those. 


IL Lastly. You may perhaps wonder why, before passing 
to the clouds, I say nothing special about ground. + But 
there is too much to be said about that to admit of my saying 
it here. You will find the principal laws of its structure ex- 
amined at length in the fourth volume of “‘ Modern Painters ;” 
and if you can get that volume, and copy carefully Plate 21., 
which I have etched after Turner with great pains, it will 
give you as much help as you need in the linear expression of 
eround-surface. Strive to get the retirement and succession 
of masses in irregular ground: much may be done in this 
way by careful watching of the perspective diminutions of 
its herbage, as well as by contour ; and much also by shad- 
ows. If you draw the shadows of leaves and tree trunks on 
any undulating ground with entire carefulness, you will be 
surprised to find how much they explain of the form and dis- 
tance of the earth on which they fall. 

Passing then to skies, note that there is this great peculiar- 
ity about sky subject, as distinguished from earth subject ;— 


* It is a useful piece of study to dissolve some Prussian blue in water, 
soasto make the liquid definitely blue: fill a large white basin with 
the solution, and put anything you like to float on it, or lie in it; wal- 
nut shells, bits of wood, leaves of flowers, &c. Then study the effects 
of the reflections, and of the stems of the flowers or submerged portions 
of the floating objects, as they appear through the blue liquid ; noting 
especially how, as you lower your head and look along the surface, you 
see the reflections clearly ; and how, as you raise your head, you lose 
the reflections, and see the submerged stems clearly. 

+ Respecting Architectural Drawing, see the notice of the works of 
Prout in the Appendix. 


328 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


that the clouds, not being much liable to man’s interference, 
are always beautifully arranged. You cannot be sure of this 
in any other features of landscape. The rock on which the 
effect of a mountain scene especially depends is always pre- 
cisely that which the roadmaker blasts or the landlord quar- 
ries; and the spot of green which Nature left with a special 
purpose by her dark forest sides, and finished with her most 
delicate grasses, is always that which the farmer ploughs or 
builds upon. But the clouds, though we can hide them with 
smoke, and mix them with poison, cannot be quarried nor 
‘ built over, and they are always therefore gloriously arranged ; 
so gloriously, that unless you have notable powers of memory 
you need not hope to approach the effect of any sky that in- 
terests you. For both its grace and its glow depend upon 
the united influence of every cloud within its compass: they 
all move and burn together in a marvellous harmony; not a 
cloud of them is out of its appointed place, or fails of its part 
in the choir: and if you are not able to recollect (which in 
the case of a complicated sky it is impossible you should) pre- 
cisely the form and position of all the clouds at a given mo- 
ment, you cannot draw the sky at all; for the clouds will not 
fit if you draw one part of them three or four minutes before 
another. You must try therefore to help what memory you 
have, by sketching at the utmost possible speed the whole 
range of the clouds; marking, by any shorthand or symbolic 
work you can hit upon, the peculiar character of each, as trans- 
parent, or fleecy, or linear, or undulatory ; giving afterwards 
such completion to the parts as your recollection will enable 
you to do. This, however, only when the sky 1s interesting 
from its general aspect; at other times, do not try to draw 
all the sky, but a single cloud: sometimes a round cumulus 
will stay five or six minutes quite steady enough to let you 
mark out his principal masses : and one or two white or crim- 
son lines which cross the sunrise will often stay without se- 
rious change for as long. And in order to be the readier in 
drawing them, practise occasionally drawing lumps of cotton, 
which will teach you better than any other stable thing the 
kind of softness there isin clouds. For you will find when 


SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 329 


you have made a few genuine studies of sky, and then look at 
any ancient or modern painting, that ordinary artists have 
always fallen into one of two faults: either, in rounding the 
clouds, they make them as solid and hard-edged as a heap of 
stones tied up in a sack, or they represent them not as 
rounded at all, but as vague wreaths of mist or flat lights in 
the sky ; and think they have done enough in leaving a little 
white paper between dashes of blue, or in taking an irregular 
space out with the sponge. Now clouds are not as solid as 
flour-sacks ; but, on the other hand, they are neither spongy 
nor flat. They are definite and very beautiful forms of sculpt- 
ured mist ; sculptured is a perfectly accurate word ; they are 
not more drifted into form than they are carved into form, the 
warm air around them cutting them into shape by absorbing 
the visible vapour beyond certain limits ; hence their angular 
and fantastic outlines, as different from a swollen, spherical, | 
or globular formation, on the one hand, as from that of flat 
films or shapeless mists on the other. And the worst of all 
is, that while these forms are difficult enough to draw on any 
terms, especially considering that they never stay quiet, they 
must be drawn also at greater disadvantage of light and 
shade than any others, the force of light in clouds being 
wholly unattainable by art; so that if we put shade enough 
to express their form as positively as it is expressed in reality, 
we must make them painfully too dark on the dark sides. 
Nevertheless, they are so beautiful, if you in the least succeed 
with them, that you will hardly, I think, lose courage. Out- 
line them often with the pen, as you can catch them here and 
there ; one of the chief uses of doing this will be, not so much 
the memorandum so obtained as the lesson you will get re- 
specting the softness of the cloud-outlines. You will always 
find yourself at a loss to see where the outline really is; and 
when drawn it will always look hard and false, and will as- 
suredly be either too round or too square, however often you 
alter it, merely passing from the one fault to the other and 
back again, the real cloud striking an inexpressible mean be- 
tween roundness and squareness in all its coils or battlements. 
I speak at present, of course, only of the cumulus cloud : the 


330 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


lighter wreaths and flakes of the upper sky cannot be outlined ; 
—they can only be sketched, like locks of hair, by many lines 
of the pen. Firmly developed bars of cloud on the horizon 
are in general easy enough, and may be drawn with decision. 
When you have thus accustomed yourself a little to the plac- 
ing and action of clouds, try to work out their light and shade, 
just as carefully as you do that of other things, looking exclu- 
sively for examples of treatment to the vignettes in Rogers’s 
Itaiy and Poems, and to the Liber Studiorum, unless you 
have access to some examples of Turner’s own work. No 
other artist ever yet drew the sky : even Titian’s clouds, and 
Tintoret’s, are conventional. The clouds in the “Ben Ar- 
thur,” “Source of Arveron,” and “Calais Pier,” are among 
the best of Turner’s storm studies; and of the upper clouds, 
the vignettes to Rogers’s Poems furnish as many examples 
as you need. 

_ And now, as our first lesson was taken from the sky, so, for 
the present, let our last be. I do not advise you to be in any 
haste to master the contents of my next letter. If you have 
any real talent for drawing, you will take delight in the dis- 
coveries of natural loveliness, which the studies I have already 
proposed will lead you into, among the fields and hills; and 
be assured that the more quietly and single-heartedly you 
take each step in the art, the quicker, on the whole, will your 
progress be. I would rather, indeed, have discussed the sub- 
jects of the following letter at greater length, and in a separate 
work addressed to more advanced students ; but as there are 
one or two things to be said on composition which may set the 
young artist’s mind somewhat more at rest, or furnish him 
with defence from the urgency of ill-advisers, I will glance 
over the main heads of the matter here ; trusting that my do- 
ing so may not beguile you, my dear reader, from your seri- 
ous work, or lead you to think me, in occupying part of this 
book with talk not altogether relevant to it, less entirely or 

Faithfully yours, 
J. Rusxin. 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 331 


LETTER OL 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 


My Dear Reaper :— 

If you have been obedient, and have hitherto done all 
that I have told you, I trust it has not been without much 
subdued remonstrance, and some serious vexation. For I 
should be sorry if, when you were led by the course of your 
study to observe closely such things as are beautiful in colour, 
you had not longed to paint them, and felt considerable dif- 
ficulty in complying with your restriction to the use of black, 
or blue, or grey. You ought to love colour, and to think noth- 
ing quite beautiful or perfect without it ; and if you really do 
love it, for its own sake, and are not merely desirous to colour 
because you think painting a finer thing than drawing, there 
is some chance you may colour well. Nevertheless, you need 
not hope ever to produce anything more than pleasant helps 
to memory, or useful and suggestive sketches in colour, unless 
you mean to be wholly an artist. You may, in the time which 
other vocations leave at your disposal, produce finished, 
beautiful, and masterly drawings in light and shade. But to 
colour well, requires your life. It cannot be done cheaper. 
The difficulty of doing right is increased—not twofold nor 
threefold, but a thousandfold, and more—by the addition of 
colour to your work. For the chances are more than a thou- 
sand to one against your being right both in form and colour 
with a given touch : it is difficult enough to be right in form, - 
if you attend to that only ; but when you have to attend, at 
the same moment, toa much more subtle thing than the form, 
the difficulty is strangely increased—and multiplied almost to - 
infinity by this great fact, that, while form is absolute, so that 
you can say at the moment you draw any line that it is either 
right or wrong, colour is wholly relative. EEvery hue through- 
out your work is altered by every touch that you add in other 
places ; so that what was warm a minute ago, becomes cold 


332 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


when you have put a hotter colour in another place, and what 
was in harmony when you left it, becomes discordant as you 
set other colours beside it ; so that every touch must be laid, 
not with a view to its effect at the time, but with a view to its 
effect in futurity, the result upon it of all that is afterwards to 
be done being previously considered. You may easily under- 
stand that, this being so, nothing but the devotion of life, and 
great genius besides, can make a colourist. 

But though you cannot produce finished coloured drawings 
of any value, you may give yourself much pleasure, and be of 
great use to other people, by occasionally sketching with a 
view to colour only ; and preserving distinct statements of cer- 
tain colour facts—as that the harvest-moon at rising was of 
such and such a red, and surrounded by clouds of such and 
such a rosy grey ; that the mountains at evening were in truth 
so deep in purple ; and the waves by the boat's side were in- 
deed of that incredible green. This only, observe, if you have 
an eye for colour ; but you may presume that you have this, if 
you enjoy colour. 

And, though of course you should always give as much form 
to your subject as your attention to its colour will admit of, 
remember that the whole value of what you are about depends, 
in a coloured sketch, on the colour merely. If the colour is 
wrong, everything is wrong: just as, if you are singing, and 
sing false notes, it does not matter how true the words are. If 
you sing at all, you must sing sweetly ; and if you colour at 
all, you must colour rightly. Give up all the form, rather 
than the slightest part of the colour: just as, if you felt your- 
self in danger of a false note, you would give up the word, and 
sing a meaningless sound, if you felt that so you could save 
the note. Never mind though your houses are all tumbling 
down—though your clouds are mere blots, and your trees 
_mere knobs, and your sun and moon like crooked sixpences— 
so only that trees, clouds, houses, and sun or moon, are of the 
right colours. Of course, the discipline you have gone through 
will enable you to hint something of form, even in the fast- 
est sweep of the brush; but do not let the thought of form 
hamper you in the least, when you begin to make coloured 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 333 


memoranda. If you want the form of the subject, draw it in 
black and white. If you want its colour, take its colour, and 
be sure you have it, and not a spurious, treacherous, half- 
measured piece of mutual concession, with the colours all 
wrong, and the forms still anything but right. It is best to 
get into the habit of considering the coloured work merely as 
supplementary to your other studies ; making your careful 
drawings of the subject first, and then a coloured memoran- 
dum separately, as shapeless as you like, but faithful in hue, 
and entirely minding its own business. This principle, how- 
ever, bears chiefly on large and distant subjects; in fore- 
grounds and near studies, the colour cannot be had without a 
good deal of definition of form. For if you do not map the 
mosses on the stones accurately, you will not have the right 
quantity of colour in each bit of moss pattern, and then none 
of the colours will look right ; but it always simplifies the work 
much if you are clear as to your point of aim, and satisfied, 
when necessary, to fail of all but that. 

Now, of course, if I were to enter into detail respecting 
colouring, which is the beginning and end of a painter’s craft, 
Ishould need to make this a work in three volumes instead of 
three letters, and to illustrate it in the costliest way. I only 
hope at present to set you pleasantly and profitably to work, 
leaving you, within the tethering of certain leading-strings, to 
gather what advantages you can from the works of art of 
which every year brings a greater number within your reach ; 
—and from the instruction which, every year, our rising artists 
will be more ready to give kindly, and better able to give wisely. 

And, first, of materials. Use hard cake colours, not moist 
colours: grind a sufficient quantity of each on your palette 
every morning, keeping a separate plate, large and deep, for 
colours to be used in broad washes, and wash both plate and 
palette every evening, so as to be able always to get good 
and pure colour when you need it; and force yourself into 
cleanly and orderly habits about your colours. The two best 
colourists of modern times, Turner and Rossetti,* afford us, I 


* I give Rossetti this preéminence, because, though the leading Pre- 
Raphaelites have all about equal power over colour in the abstract, 


334 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


am sorry to say, no confirmation of this precept by their prac- 
tice. Turner was, and Rossetti is, as slovenly in all their pro- 
cedures aS men can well be; but the result of this was, with 
Turner, that the colours have altered in all his pictures, and in 
many of his drawings; and the result of it with Rossetti is, 
that, though his colours are safe, he has sometimes to throw 
aside work that was half done, and begin over again. William 
Hunt, of the Old Water-colour, is very neat in his practice ; 
s0, I believe, is Mulready ; so is John Lewis; and so are the 
leading Pre-Raphaelites, Rossetti only excepted. And there 
can be no doubt about the goodness of the advice, if it were 
only for this reason, that the more particular you are about 
your colours the more you will get into a deliberate and 
methodical habit in using them, and all true speed in colouring 
comes of this deliberation. 

Use Chinese white, well ground, to mix with your colours 
in order to pale them, instead of a quantity of water. You 
will thus be able to shape your masses more quietly, and play 
the colours about with more ease; they will not damp your 
paper so much, and you will be able to go on continually, and 
lay forms of passing cloud and other fugitive or delicately 
shaped lights, otherwise unattainable except by time. 

This mixing of white with the pigments, so as to render 
them opaque, constitutes body-colour drawing as opposed to 
transparent-colour drawing and you will, perhaps, have it often 
said to you that this body-colour is “ illegitimate.” It is just 
as legitimate as oil-painting, being, so far as handling is con- 
cerned, the same process, only without its uncleanliness, its 
unwholesomeness, or its inconvenience ; for oil will not dry 
quickly, nor carry safely, nor give the same effects of atmos- 
phere without tenfold labour. And if you hear it said that the 
body-colour looks chalky or opaque, and, as is very likely, 
think so yourself, be yet assured of this, that though certain 


Rossetti and Holman Hunt are distinguished above the rest for render- 
ing colour under effects of light; and of these two, Rossetti composes with 
richer fancy, and with a deeper sense of beauty, Hunt's stern realism 
leading him continually into harshness. Rossettis carelessness, to do 
him justice, is only in water-colour, never in oil. 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 335 


effects of glow and transparencies of gloom are not to be 
reached without transparent colour, those glows and glooms 
are not the noblest aim of art. After many years’ study of 
the various results of fresco and oil painting in Italy, and of 
body-colour and transparent colour in England, I am now en- 
tirely convinced that the greatest things that are to be done 
in art must be done in dead colour. The habit of depending 
on varnish or on lucid tints transparency, makes the painter 
_ comparatively lose sight of the nobler translucence which is 
obtained by breaking various colours amidst each other: and 
even when, as by Correggio, exquisite play of hue is joined 
with exquisite transparency, the delight in the depth almost 
always leads the painter into mean and false chiaroscuro ; it 
leads him to like dark backgrounds instead of luminous ones,* 
and to enjoy, in general, quality of colour more than grandeur 
of composition, and confined light rather than open sunshine : 
so that the really greatest thoughts of the greatest men have 
always, so far as I remember, been reached in dead colour, 


* All the degradation of art which was brought about, after the rise 
of the Dutch school, by asphaltum, yellow varnish, and brown trees, 
would have been prevented, if only painters had been forced to work in 
dead colour. Any colour will do for some people, if it is browned and 
shining ; but fallacy in dead colour is detected on the instant. I even 
believe that whenever a painter begins to wish that he could touch any 
portion of his work with gum, he is going wrong. 

It is necessary, however, in this matter, carefully to distinguish be- 
tween translucency and lustre. Transiucency, though, as I have said 
above, a dangerous temptation, is, in its place, beautiful; but lustre, or 
shininess, is always, in painting, a defect. Nay, one of my best painter- 
friends (the ‘‘ best” being understood to attach to both divisions of that 
awkward compound word’, tried the other day to persuade me that 
lustre was an ignobleness in anything ; and it was only the fear of trea- 
son to ladies’ eyes, and to mountain streams, and to morning dew, which 
kept me from yielding the point to him. One is apt always to generalise 
too quickly in such matters; but there can be no question that lustre is 
destructive of loveliness in colour, as it is of intelligibility in form. 
Whatever may be the pride of a young beauty in the knowledge that 
her eyes shine (though perhaps even eyes are most beautiful in dimness), 
she would be sorry if her cheeks did ; and which of us would wish te 
polish a rose ? 


356 THE ELEMENTS CF DRAWING. 


and the noblest oil pictures of Tintoret and Veronese are those 
which are likest frescos. 

Besides all this, the fact is, that though sometimes a little 
chalky and coarse-looking, body-colour is, in a sketch, infi- 
nitely liker nature than transparent colour: the bloom and 
mist of distance are accurately and instantly represented by 
the film of opaque blue (quite accurately, I think, by nothing 
else); and for ground, rocks, and buildings, the earthy and 
solid surface is, of course, always truer than the most finished 
and carefully wrought work in transparent tints can ever be. 

Against one thing, however, I must steadily caution you. 
All kinds of colour are equally illegitimate, if you think they 
will allow you to alter at your pleasure, or blunder at your 
ease. There is no vehicle or method of colour which admits 
of alteration or repentance ; you must be right at once, or 
never ; and you might as well hope to catch a rifle bullet in 
your hand, and put it straight, when it was going wrong, as 
to recover a tint once spoiled. The secret of all good colour 
in oil, water, or anything else, lies primarily in that sentence 
spoken to me by Mulready: ‘“‘ Know what you have to do.” 
The process may be a long one, perhaps: you may have to 
ground with one colour; to touch it with fragments of a 
second ; to crumble a third into the interstices ; a fourth into 
the interstices of the third; to glaze the whole with a fifth ; 
and to reinforce in points with a sixth: but whether you 
haye one, or ten, or twenty processes to go through, you must 
go straight through them, knowingly and foreseeingly all the 
way ; and if you get the thing once wrong, there is no hope 
for you but in washing or scraping boldly down to the white 
ground, and beginning again. 

The drawing in body-colour will tend to teach you all this, 
more than any other method, and above all it will prevent you 
from falling into the pestilent habit of sponging to get text- 
ure ; a trick which has nearly ruined our modern water-colour 
school of art. There are sometimes places in which a skilful 
artist will roughen his paper a little to get certain conditions 
of dusty colour with more ease than he could otherwise; and 
sometimes a skilfully rased piece of paper will, in the midst 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. O37 


of transparent tints, answer nearly the purpose of chalky 
body-colour in representing the surfaces of rocks or buildings. 
But artifices of this kind are always treacherous in a tyro’s 
hands, tempting him to trust in them; and you had _ better 
always work on white or grey paper as smooth as silk ;* and 
never disturb the surface of your colour or paper, except 
finally to scratch out the very highest lights if you are using 
transparent colours. 

I have said above that body-colour drawing will teach you 
the use of colour better than working with merely transparent 
tints ; but this is not because the process is an easier one, 
but because it is a more complete one, and also because it in- 
volves some working with transparent tints in the best way. 
You are not to think that because you use body-colour you 
may make any kind of mess that you like, and yet get out of 
it. But you are to avail yourself of the characters of your 
material, which enable you most nearly to imitate the proc- 
esses of Nature. Thus, suppose you have a red rocky cliff 
to sketch, with blue clouds floating over it. You paint your 
cliff first firmly, then take your blue, mixing it to such a tint 
(and here is a great part of the skill needed), that when it is 
laid over the red, in the thickness required for the effect of 
the mist, the warm rock-colour showing through the blue 
cloud-colour, may bring it to exactly the hue you want ; (your 
upper tint, therefore, must be mixed colder than you want it ;) 
then you lay it on, varying it as you strike it, getting the 
forms of the mist at once, and, if it be rightly done, with ex- 
quisite quality of colour, from the warm tint’s showing 
through and between the particles of the other. When it is 
dry, you may add a little colour to retouch the edges where 
they want shape, or heighten the lights where they want 
roundness, or put another tone over the whole; but you can 


* But not shiny or greasy. Bristol board, or hot-pressed imperial, or 
grey paper that feels slightly adhesive to the hand, is best. Coarse, 
gritty, and sandy papers are fit only for blotters and blunderers; no 
good draughtsman would lay a line on them. Turner worked much on 
athin tough paper, dead in survace; rolling up his sketches in tight 
bundles that would go deep into his pockets. 


338 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


take none away. If you touch or disturb the surface, or by 
any untoward accident mix the under and upper colours to- 
gether, all is lost irrecoverably. Begin your drawing from 
the ground again if you like, or throw it into the fire if you 
like. But do not waste time in trying to mend it.* 

This discussion of the relative merits of transparent and 
opaque colour has, however, led us a little beyond the point 
where we should have begun ; we must go back to our palette, 
if you please. Geta cake of each of the hard colours named 
in the note below} and try experiments on their simple com- 
binations, by mixing each colour with every other. If you 
like to do it in an orderly way, you may prepare a squared 
piece of pasteboard, and put the pure colours in columns at 


*T insist upon this unalterability of colour the more because I address 
you as a beginner, or an amateur ; a great artist can sometimes get out 
of a difficulty with credit, or repent without confession. Yet even 
Titian’s alterations usually show as stains on his work. 

+ It is, I think, a piece of affectation to try to work with few colours ; 
it saves time to have enough tints prepared without mixing, and you 
may at once allow yourself these twenty-four. If you arrange them 
in your colour-box in the order I have set them down, you will always 
easily put your finger on the one you want. 


Cobalt. Smalt. Antwerp blue. Prussian blue, 
Black. Gamboge, Kmerald green. Hooker's green. 
Lemon yellow. Cadmium yellow. Yellow ochre. Roman ochre. 
Raw sienna, Burnt sienna. Light red Indian red. 
Mars orange. Ext'tof vermilion, Carmine. Violet carmine. 
Brown madder. Burnt umber. Vandyke brown. Sepia. 


Antwerp blue and Prussian blue are not very permanent colours, but 
you need not care much about permanence in your own work as yet, 
and they are both beautiful ; while Indigo is marked by Field as more 
fugitive still, and is very ugly. Hooker’s green is a mixed colour, put 
in the box merely to save you loss of time in mixing gamboge and 
Prussian blue. No. 1. is the best tint of it. Violet carmine is a noble 
colour for laying broken shadows with, to be worked into afterwards 
with other colours. 

If you wish to take up colouring seriously, you had better get Field’s 
‘¢ Chromatography” at once ; only do not attend to anything it says 
about principles or harmonies of colour; but only to its statements of 
practical serviceableness in pigments, and of their operations on each 
other when mixed, &c. 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 239 


the top and side ; the mixed tints being given at the inter- 
sections, thus (the letters standing for colours ) : 


b Cc d e f &e 
a& ab ac ad ae af 
b — be bd be bf 
ec — — cd ce cf 
de. iz. = de df 
e— — _— == ef 
&e. 


This will give you some general notion of the characters of 
mixed tints of two colours only, and it is better in practice 
to confine yourself as much as possible to these, and to get 
more complicated colours, either by putting a third over the 
first blended tint, or by putting the third into its interstices. 
Nothing but watchful practice will teach you the effects that 
colours have on each other when thus put over, or beside, each 
other. | 

When you have got a little used to the principal combi- 
nations, place yourself at a window which the sun does not 
shine in at, commanding some simple 
piece of landscape ; outline this landscape deol 
roughly ; then take a piece of white card- % 
board, cut out a hole in it about the size ae R 
of a large pea; and supposing # is the 


a 
room, a d the window, and you are sitting 
at a, Fig. 29., hold this cardboard a little 
outside of the window, upright, and in 


the direction b d, parallel a little turned aaa 

to the side of the window, or so as to catch more light, as at 
ad, never turned as at cd, or the paper will be dark. Then 
you will see the landscape, bit by bit, through the circular 
hole. Match the colours of each important bit as nearly 
as you can, mixing your tints with white, beside the aperture. 
When matched, put a touch of the same tint at the top of 
your paper, writing under it: “dark tree colour,” ‘hill col- 
our,” ‘field colour,” as the case may by. Then wash the tint 


340 THE EHLEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


away from beside the opening, and the cardboard will be 
ready to match another piece of the landscape.* When you 
have got the colours of the principal masses thus indicated, 
lay on a piece of each in your sketch in its right place, and 
then proceed to complete the sketch in harmony with them, 
by your eye. 

In the course of your early experiments, you will be much 
struck by two things: the first, the inimitable brilliancy of 
light in sky and in sun-lighted things: and the second, that 
among the tints which you can imitate, those which you 
thought the darkest will continually turn out to be in reality 
the lightest. Darkness of objects is estimated by us, under 
ordinary circumstances, much more by knowledge than by 
sight ; thus, a cedar or Scotch fir, at 200 yards off, will be 
thought of darker green than an elm or oak near us; because 
we know by experience that the peculiar colour they exhibit, 
at that distance, is the sign of darkness of foliage. But when 
we try them through the cardboard, the near oak will be found, 
indeed, rather dark green, and the distant cedar, perhaps, pale 
eray-purple. The quantity of purple and grey in Nature is, 
by the way, another somewhat surprising subject of dis- 
covery. 

Well, having ascertained thus your principal tints, you may 
proceed to fill up your sketch ; in doing which observe these 
following particulars : 

1. Many portions of your subject appeared through the 
aperture in the paper brighter than the paper, as sky, sun- 
lighted grass, &c. Leave these portions, for the present, 
white ; and proceed with the parts of which you can match 
the tints. 


* A more methodical, though, under general circumstances, uselessly 
prolix way, is to cut a square hole, some half an inch wide, in the sheet 
of cardboard, and a series of small circular holes in a slip of cardboard 
an inch wide. Pass the slip over the square opening, and match each 
colour beside one of the circular openings. You will thus have no occa- 
sion to wash any of the colours away. But the first rough method is 
generally all you want, as after a little practice, you only need to look 
at the hue through the opening in order to be able to transfer it to your 
drawing at once, 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 341 


2. As you tried your subject with the cardboard, you must 
have observed how many changes of hue took place over small 
spaces. In filling up your work, try to educate your eye to 
perceive these differences of hue without the help of the card- 
board, and lay them deliberately, like a mosaic-worker, as sep- 
arate colours, preparing each carefully on your palatte, and 
laying it as if it were a patch of coloured cloth, cut out, to be 
fitted neatly by its edge to the next patch ; so that the fauli of 
your work may be, not a slurred or misty look, but a patched 
bed-cover look, as if it had all been cut out with scissors. For 
instance, in drawing the trunk of a birch tree, there will be 
probably white high lights, then a pale rosy grey round them 
on the light side, then a (probably greenish) deeper grey on 
the dark side, varied by reflected colours, and over all, rich 
black strips of bark and brown spots of moss. Lay first the 
rosy grey, leaving white for the high lights and for the spots of 
moss, and not touching the dark side. Then lay the grey for 
the dark side, fitting it well up to the rosy grey of the light, 
leaving also in this darker grey the white paper in the places 
for the black and brown moss; then prepare the moss colours 
separately for each spot, and lay each in the white place left 
for it. Not one grain of white, except that purposely left for 
the high lights, must be visible when the work is done, even 
through a magnifying-glass, so cunningly must you fit the 
edges to each other. Finally, take your background colours, 
and put them on each side of the tree-trunk, fitting them care- 
fully to its edge. 

Fine work you would make of this, wouldn’t you, if you had 
not learned to draw first, and could not now draw a good out- 
line for the stem, much less terminate a colour mass in the 
outline you wanted ? 

Your work will look very odd for some time, when you first 
begin to paint in this way, and before you can modify it, as I 
shall tell you presently how; but never mind; it is of the 
greatest possible importance that you should practice this sep- 
arate laying on of the hues, for all good colouring finally de- 
pends onit. It is, indeed, often necessary, and sometimes de- 
sirable, to lay one colour and form boldly over another : thus, 


842 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


in laying leaves on blue sky, it is impossible always in large 
pictures, or when pressed for time, to fill in the blue throngh 
the interstices of the leaves; and the great Venetians con- 
stantly lay their blue ground first, and then, having let it dry, 
strike the golden brown over it in the form of the leaf, leaving 
the under blue to shine through the gold, and subdue it to the 
olive green they want. But in the most precious and perfect 
work each leaf is inlaid, and the blue worked round it: and, 
whether you use one or other mode of getting your result, it is 
equally necessary to be absolute and decisive in your laying the 
colour. Either your ground must be laid firmly first, and then 
your upper colour struck upon it in perfect form, for ever, 
thenceforward, unalterable ; or else the two colours must be 
individually put in their places, and led up to each other till 
they meet at their appointed border, equally, thenceforward, 
unchangeable. Hither process, you see, involves absolute de- 
cision. If you once begin to slur, or change, or sketch, or try 
this way and that with your colour, it is all over with it and 
with you. You will continually see bad copyists trying to imi- 
tate the Venetians, by daubing their colours about, and re- 
touching, and finishing, and softening : when every touch and 
every added hue only lead them farther into chaos. There is 
a dog between two children in a Veronese in the Louvre, which 
gives the copyist much employment. He has a dark ground 
behind him, which Veronese has painted first, and then when 
it was dry, or nearly so, struck the locks of the dog’s white 
hair over it with some half-dozen curling sweeps of his brush, 
right at once, and forever. Had one line or hair of them gone 
wrong, it would have been wrong forever ; no retouching could 
have mended it. The poor copyists daub in first some back- 
eround, and then some dog’s hair; then retouch the back- 
eround, then the hair, work for hours at it, expecting it always 
to come right to-morrow—‘“ wheu it is finished.” They may 
work for centuries at it, and they will never do it. If they can 
do it with Veronese’s allowance of work, half a dozen sweeps 
of the hand over the dark background, well ; if not, they may 
ask the dog himself whether it will ever come right, and get 
true answer from him—on Launce’s conditions: “If he say 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 343 


‘ay, it will ; if he say ‘no,’ it will; if he shake his tail and 
say nothing, it will.” 

Whenever you lay on a mass of colour, be sure that how- 
ever large it may be, or however small, it shall be gradated. 
No colour exists in Nature under ordinary circumstances with- 
out gradation. If you do not see this, it is the fault of your 
inexperience ; you will see it in due time, if you practise 
enough. But in general you maysee it at once. In the birch 
trunk, for instance, the rosy grey must be gradated by the 
roundness of the stem till it meets the shaded side ; similarly 
the shaded side is gradated by reflected light. Accordingly, 
whether by adding water, or white paint, or by unequal force 
of touch (this you will do at pleasure, according to the texture 
you wish to produce), you must, in every tint you lay on, make 
it a little paler at one part than another, and get an even gra- 
dation between the two depths. This is very like laying down 
a formal law or recipe for you; but you will find it is merely 
the assertion of a natural fact. It is not indeed physically 
impossible to meet with an ungradated piece of colour, but it 
is so supremely improbable, that you had better get into the 
habit of asking yourself invariably, when you are going 
to copy a tint,—not “Js that gradated?” but “ Which way is 
it gradated ?” and at least in ninety-nine out of a hundred in- 
stances, you will be able to answer decisively after a careful 
glance, though the gradation may have been so subtle that 
you did not see it at first. And it does not matter how small 
the touch of colour may be, though not larger than the smallest 
pin’s head, if one part of it is not darker than the rest, it is a 
bad touch ; for it is not merely because the natural fact is so, 
that your colour should be gradated ; the preciousness and 
pleasantness of the colour itself depends more on this than on 
any other of its qualities, for gradation is to colours just what 
curvature is to lines, both being felt to be beautiful by the 
pure instinct of every human mind, and both, considered as 
types, expressing the law of gradual change and progress in 
the human soul itself. What the difference is in mere beauty 
between a gradated and ungradated colour, may be seen easily 
by laying an even tint of rose-colour on paper, and putting a 


344 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


rose leaf beside it. The victorious beauty of the rose as 
compared with other flowers, depends wholly on the deli- 
cacy and buantity of its colour gradations, all other flowers 
being either less rich in gradation, not having so many folds 
of leaf; or less tender, being patched and veined instead of 
flushed. 

4, But observe, it is not enough in general that colour 
should be gradated by being made merely paler or darker at 
one place than another. Generally colour changes as it dimin- 
ishes, and is not merely darker at one spot, but also purer at 
one spot than anywhere else. It does not in the least follow 
that the darkest spot should be the purest ; still less so that the 
lightest should be the purest. Very often the two gradations 
more or less cross each other, one passing in one direction 
from paleness to darkness, another in another direction from 
purity to dullness, but there will almost always be both of 
them, however reconciled ; and you must never be satisfied 
with a piece of colour until you have got both: that is to say, 
every piece of blue that you lay on must be quite blue only at 
some given spot, nor that a large spot ; and must be gradated 
from that into less pure blue—greyish blue, or greenish blue, 
or purplish blue, over all the rest of the space it occupies. 
And this you must do in one of three ways: either, while the 
colour is wet, mix it with the colour which is to subdue it, 
adding gradually a little more and a little more; or else, when 
the colour is quite dry, strike a gradated touch of another 
colour over it, leaving only a point of the first tint visible: or 
else, lay the subduing tints on in small touches, as in the ex- 
ercise of tinting the chess-board. Of each of these methods 
I have something to tell you separately: but that is distinct 
from the subject of gradation, which I must not quit without 
once more pressing upon you the preéminent necessity of in- 
troducing it everywhere. Ihave profound dislike of anything 
like habit of hand, and yet, in this one instance, I feel almost 
tempted to encourage you to get into a habit of never touch- 
ing paper with colour, without securing a gradation. You 
will not in Turner’s largest oil pictures, perhaps six or seven 
feet long by four or five high, find one spot of colour as large 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 345 


as a grain of wheat ungradated : and you will find in practice, 
that brilliancy of hue, and vigour of light, and even the aspect 
of transparency in shade, are essentially dependent on this 
character alone ; hardness, coldness, and opacity resulting far 
more from equality of colour than from nature of colour, 
Give me some mud off a city crossing, some ochre out of a 
gravel pit, a little whitening, and some coal-dust, and I will 
paint you a luminous picture, if you give me time to gradate 
my mud, and subdue my dust: but though you had the red 
of the ruby, the blue of the gentian, snow for the light, and 
amber for the gold, you cannot paint a luminous picture, if 
you keep the masses ot those colours unbroken in purity, and 
unvarying in depth. 

5. Next note the three processes by which gradation and 
other characters are to be obtained : 

A. Mixing while the colour is wet. 

You may be confused by my first telling you to lay on the 
hues in separate patches, and then telling you to mix hues to- 
gether as you lay them on: but the separate masses are to be 
laid, when colours distinctly oppose each other at a given 
limit ; the hues to be mixed, when they palpitate one through 
the other, or fade one into the other. It is better to err a lit- 
tle on the distinct side. Thus I told you to paint the dark 
and light sides of the birch trunk separately, though in reality, 
the two tints change, as the trunk turns away from the light, 
eradually one into the other: and, after being laid separately 
on, will need some farther touching to harmonize them: but 
they do so in a very narrow space, marked distinctly all the 
way up the trunk ; and it is easier and safer, therefore, to 
keep them separate at first. Whereas it often happens that 
the whole beauty of two colours will depend on the one being 
continued well through the other, and playing in the midst of 
it: blue and green often do so in water: blue and grey, or 
purple and scarlet, in sky ; in hundreds of such instances the 
most beautiful and truthful results may be obtained by laying 
one colour into the other while wet; judging wisely how far 
it will spread, or blending it with the brush in somewhat 
thicker consistence of wet body-colour ; only observe, never 


346 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


mix in this way two mixtures ; let the colour you lay into the 
other be always a simple, not a compound tint. 

B. Laying one colour over another. 

If you lay on a solid touch of vermilion, and, after it is quite . 
dry, strike a little very wet carmine quickly over it, you will 
obtain a much more brilliant red than by mixing the carmine 
and vermilion. Similarly, if you lay a dark colour first, and 
strike a little blue or white body-colour lightly over it, you 
will get a more beautiful grey than by mixing the colour and 
the blue or white. In very perfect painting, artifices of this 
kind are continually used; but I would not have you trust, 
much to them ; they are apt to make you think too much of 
quality of colour. I should like you to depend on little more 
than the dead colours, simply laid on, only observe always 
this, that the less colour you do the work with, the better it 
will always be:* so that if you have laid a red colour, and 
you want a purple one above, do not mix the purple on your 
palette and lay it on so thick as to overpower the red, but take 
a little thin blue from your palette, and lay it lightly over 
the red, so as to let the red be seen through, and thus pro- 
duce the required purple ; and if you want a green hue over 
a blue one, do not lay a quantity of green on the blue, but a 
little yellow, and so on, always bringing the under colour into 
service as far as you possibly can. If, however, the colour be- 
neath is wholly opposed to the one you have to lay on, as, 
suppose, if green is to be laid over scarlet, you must either 
remove the required parts of the under colour daintily first 
with your knife, or with water; or else, lay solid white over 
it massively, and leave that to dry, and then glaze the white 
with the upper colour. This is better, in general, than laying 
the upper colour itself so thick as to conquer the ground, 
which, in fact, if it be a transparent colour, you cannot do. 


*Tf colours were twenty times as costly as they are, we should have 
many more good painters. If I were Chancellor of the Exchequer I 
would lay a tax of twenty shillings a cake on all colours except black, 
Prussian blue, Vandyke brown, and Chinese white, which I would leave 
for students. I don’t say this jestingly; I believe such a tax would do 
more to advance real art than a great many schools of design. 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 347 


Thus, if you have to strike warm boughs and leaves of trees 
over blue sky, and they are too intricate to have their places 
left for them in laying the blue, it is better to lay them first in 
solid white, and then glaze with sienna and ochre, than to mix 
the sienna and white ; though, of course, the process is longer 
and more troublesome. Nevertheless, if the forms of touches 
required are very delicate, the after glazing is impossible. 
You must then mix the warm colour thick at once, and so use 
it: and this is often necessary for delicate grasses, and such 
other fine threads of light in foreground work. 

C. Breaking one colour in small points through or over an- 
other. 

This is the most important of all processes in good modern* 
oil and water-colour painting, but you need not hope to attain 
very great skill in it. To do it well is very laborious, and re- 
quires such skill and delicacy of hand as can only be acquired 
by unceasing practice. But you will find advantage in noting 
the following points: 

(a.) In distant effects of rich subjects, wood, or rippled 
water, or broken clouds, much may be done by touches or ~ 
crumbling dashes of rather dry colour, with other colours after- 
wards put cunningly into the interstices. The more you prac- 
tise this, when the subject evidently calls for it, the more your 
eye will enjoy the higher qualities of colour. The process is, 
in fact, the carrying out of the principle of separate colours 
to the utmost possible refinement; using atoms of colour in 
juxtaposition, instead of large spaces. And note, in filling up 
minute interstices of this kind, that if you want the colour 
you fill them with to show brightly, itis better to put a rather 
positive point of it, with a little white left beside or round it 
in the interstice, than to put a pale tint of the colour over the 
whole interstice. Yellow or orange will hardly show, if pale, 
in small spaces ; but they show brightly in firm touches, how- 
ever small, with white beside them. 

(b.) If a colour is to be darkened by superimposed portions 

* I say modern, because Titian’s quiet way of blending colours, which 


1s the perfectly right one, is not understood now by any artist. The best” 
colour we reach is got by stippling ; but this not quite right, 


348 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


of another, it is, in many cases, better to lay the uppermost 
colour in rather vigorous small touches, like finely chopped 
straw, over the under one, than to lay it on as a tint, for two 
reasons: the first, that the play of the two colours together is 
pleasant to the eye; the second, that much expression of form 
may be got by wise administration of the upper dark touches. 
In distant mountains they may be made pines of, or broken 
crags, or villages, or stones, or whatever you choose ; in clouds 
they may indicate the direction of the rain, the roll and out- 
line of the cloud masses; and in water, the minor waves. All 
noble effects of dark atmosphere are got in good water-colour 
drawing by these two expedients, interlacing the colours, or 
retouching the lower one with fine darker drawing in an 
upper. Sponging and washing for dark atmospheric effect is 
barbarous, and mere tyro’s work, though it is often useful for 
passages of delicate atmospheric light. 

(c.) When you have time, practice the production of mixed 
tints by interlaced touches of the pure colours out of which 
they are formed, and use the process at the parts of your 
sketches where you wish to get rich and luscious effects. Study 
the works of William Hunt, of the Old Water-colour Society, 
in this respect, continually, and make frequent memoranda 
of the variegations in flowers; not painting the flower com- 
pletely, but laying the ground colour of one petal, and paint- 
ing the spots on it with studious precision: a series of single 
petals of lilies, geraniums, tulips, &c., numbered with proper 
reference to their position in the flower, will be interesting to 
you on many grounds besides those of art. Be careful to get the 
gradated distribution of the spots well followed in the calceo- 
larias, foxgloves, and the like; and work out the odd, indefinite 
hues of the spots themselves with minute grains of pure inter- 
laced colour, otherwise you will never get their richness or 
bloom. You will be surprised to find, as you do this, first 
the universality of the law of gradation we have so much in- 
sisted upon ; secondly, that Nature is just as economical of 
her fine colours as I have told you to be of yours. You would 
think, by the way she paints, that her colours cost her some- 
thing enormous: she will only give you a single pure touch, 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 349 


just where the petal turns into light ; but down in the bell all 
is subdued, and under the petal all is subdued, even in the 
showiest flower. What you thought was bright blue is, when 
you look close, only dusty grey, or green, or purple, or every 
colour in the world at once, only a single gleam or streak of 
pure blue in the centre of it. And so with all her colours. 
Sometimes I have really thought her miserliness intolerable : 
in a gentian, for instance, the way she economises her ultra- 
marine down in the bell is a little too bad. 

Next, respecting general tone. I said, just now, that, for 
the sake of students, my tax should not be laid on black or 
on white pigments; but if you mean to be a colourist, you 
must lay a tax on them yourselves when you begin to use true 
colour; that is to say, you must use them little and make of 
them much. There is no better test of your colour tones be- 
ing good, than your having made the white in your picture 
precious, and the black conspicuous. 

I say, first, the white precious. I do not mean merely glit- 
tering or brilliant; it is easy to scratch white seagulls out of 
black clouds and dot clumsy foliage with chalky dew ; but, 
when white is well managed, it ought to be strangely deli- 
cious—tender as well as bright—like inlaid mother of pearl, or 
‘white roses washed in milk. The eye ought to seek it for 
rest, brilliant though it may be; and to feel it as a space of 
strange, heavenly paleness in the midst of the flushing of the 
colours. This effect you can only reach by general depth of 
middle tint, by absolutely refusing to allow any white to exist 
except where you need it, and by keeping the white itself sub- 
dued by grey, except at a few points of chief lustre. 

Secondly, you must make the black conspicuous. How. 
ever small a point of black may be, it ought to catch the eye, 
otherwise your work is too heavy in the shadow. All the or- 
dinary shadows should be of some colour—never black, nor 
approaching black, they should be evidently and always of a 
luminous nature, and the black should look strange among 
them ; never occurring except in a black object, or in small 
points indicative of intense shade in the very centre of masses 
of shadow. Shadows of absolutely negative grey, however, 


350 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


may be beautifully used with white, or with gold ; but still 
though the black thus, in subdued strength, becomes spa- 
cious, it should always be conspicuous ; the spectator should 
notice this grey neutrality with some wonder, and enjoy, all 
the more intensely on account of it, the gold colour and 
the white which it relieves. Of all the great colourists 
Velasquez is the greatest master of the black chords. His 
black is more precious than most other people’s crimson. 

It is not, however, only white and black which you must 
make valuable ; you must give rare worth to every colour you 
use ; but the Ef and black ought to separate themselves 
Peake fF from the rest, while the othet colours should be con- 
tinually passing one into the other, being all evidently com- 
panions in the same gay world ; while the white, black, and 
neutral grey should stand monkishly aloof in the midst of 
them. You may melt your crimson into purple, your purple 
into blue and your blue into green, but you must not melt any 
of them into black. You should, however, try, as I said, to 
give preciousness to all your colours; and this especially by 
nevey using a grain more than will just do the work, and 
giving each hue the highest value by opposition. All fine 
colouring, like fine drawing, is delicate; and so delicate that 
if, at last, you see the colour you are putting on, you are put- 
ting on toomuch. You ought to feel a change wrought in 
the general tone, by touches of colour which individually are 
too pale to be seen ; and if there is one atom of any colour in 
the whole picture which is unnecessary to it, that atom hurts 
it. 

Notice also, that nearly all good compound colours are odd 
colours. You shall look at a hue in a good painter’s work ten 
minutes before you know what to call it. You thought it was 
brown, presently, you feel that it is red ; next that there is, 
somehow, yellow in it ; presently afterwards that there is blue 
init. Ifyou try to copy it you will always find your colour 
too warm or too cold—no colour in the box will seem to have 
any affinity with it; and yet it will be as pure as if it were 
laid at a single touch with a single colour. 

As to the choice and harmony of colours in general, if you 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 351 


cannot choose and harmonize them by instinct, you will never 
do it at all. If you need examples of utterly harsh and horri- 
ble colour, you may find plenty given in treatises upon colour- 
ing, to illustrate the laws of harmony; and if you want to 
colour beautifully, colour as best pleases yourself at quiet 
times, not so as to catch the eye, nor to look as if it were 
clever or difficult to colour in that way, but so that the colour 
may be pleasant to you when you are happy, or thoughtful. 
Look much at the morning and evening sky, and much at 
simple flowers—dog-roses, wood hyacinths, violets, poppies, 
thistles, heather, and such like—as Nature arranges them in 
the woods and fields. If ever any scientific person tells you 
that two colours are “ discordant,” make a note of the two 
colours, and put them together whenever you can. I have 
actually heard people say that blue and green were discord- 
ant ; the two colours which Nature seems to intend never to be 
separated and never to be felt, either of them, in its full beauty 
without the other !—a peacock’s neck, or a blue sky through 
green leaves, or a blue wave with green lights though it, being 
precisely the loveliest things, next to clouds at sunrise, in this 
coloured world of ours. If you have a good eye for colours, you 
will soon find out how constantly Nature puts purple and green 
together, purple and scarlet, green and blue, yellow and neu- 
tral grey, and the like ; and how she strikes these colour-con- 
cords for general tones, and then works into them with innu- 
merable subordinate ones; and you will gradually come to 
like what she does, and find out new and beautiful chords of 
eolour in her work every day. If you enjoy them, depend 
upon it you will paint them to a certain point right: or, at 
least, if you do not enjoy them, you are certain to paint them 
wrong. If colour does not give you intense pleasure, let it 
alone ; depend upon it, you are only tormenting the eyes and 
senses of people who feel colour, whenever you touch it; and 
that is unkind and improper. You will find, also, your power 
of colouring depend much on your state of health and right 
balance of mind ; when you are fatigued or ill you will not 
see colours well, and when you are ill-tempered you will not 
choose them well: thus, though not infallibly a test of chav- 


52 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


acter in individuals, colour power is a great sign of mental 
health in nations ; when they are in a state of intellectual de. 
cline, their colouring always gets dull.* You must also take 
ereat care not to be misled by affected talk about colour from 
people who have not the gift of it: numbers are eager and 
voluble about it who probably never in all their lives received 
one genuine colour-sensation. The modern religionists of the 
school of Overbeck are just like people who eat slate-pencil 
and chalk, and assure everybody that they are nicer and purer 
than strawberries and plums. 

Take care also never to be misled into any idea that colour 
can help or display form ; colour + always disguises form, 
and is meant to do so. 

It is a favourite dogma among modern writers on colour 
that ‘‘warm colours” (reds and yellows) “‘ approach” or ex- 
press nearness, and “cold colours” (blue and grey) “ retire” 
or express distance. So far is this from being the case, that 
no expression of distance in the world is so great as that of 
the gold and orange in twilight sky. Colours, as such, are 
ABSOLUTELY Inexpressive respecting distance. It is their quality 
(as depth, delicacy, &c.) which expresses distance, not their 


* The worst general character that colour can possibly have is a prev- 
alent tendency to a dirty yellowish green, like that of a decaying heap 
of vegetables ; this colour is accwrately indicative of decline or paralysis 
in missal-painting. 

+ That is to say, local colour inherent in the object. The gradations 
of colour in the various shadows belonging to various lights exhibit form, 
and therefore no one but a colourist can ever draw forms perfectly (see 
‘Modern Painters,” vol. iv. chap. iii. at the end) ; but all notions of ex- 
plaining form by superimposed colour, as in architectural mouldings, 
are absurd. Colour adorns form, but does not interpret it. An apple is 
prettier, because it is striped, but it does not look a bit rounder ; and a 
cheek is prettier because it is flushed, but you would see the form of the 
cheek bone better if itwere not Colour may, indeed, detach one shape 
from another, as in grounding a bas-relief, but it always diminishes 
the appearance of projection, and whether you put blue, purple, red, 
yellow, or green, for your ground, the bas-relief will be just a3 clearly 
or just as imperfectly relieved, as long as the colours are of equal depth. 
The blue ground will not retire the hundredth part of an inch more 
than the red one. 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 353 


tint. A blue bandbox set on the same shelf with a yellow one 
will not look an inch farther off, but a red or orange cloud, in 
the upper sky, will always appear to be beyond a blue cloud 
close to us, as it is in reality. It is quite true that in certain 
objects, blue is a sign of distance ; but that is not because 
blue is a retiring colour, but because the mist in the air is 
blue, and therefore any warm colour which has not streneth 
of light enough to pierce the mist is lost or subdued in its 
blue: but blue is no more, on this account, a “retiring col- 
our,” than brown is a retiring colour, because, when stones 
are seen through brown water, the deeper they lie the browner 
they look ; or than yellow is a retiring colour, because when 
objects are seen through a London fog, the farther off they 
are the yellower they look. Neither blue, nor yellow, nor red, 
can have, as such, the smallest power of expressing either near- 
ness or distance: they express them only under the peculiar 
circumstances which render them at the moment, or in that 
place, signs of nearness or distance. Thus, vivid orange in an 
orange is a sign of nearness, for if you put the orange a great 
way off, its colour will not look so bright; but vivid orange 
in sky is a sign of distance, because you cannot get the colour 
of orange in a cloud near you. So purple ina violet ora 
hyacinth is a sign of nearness, because the closer you look at 
them the more purple you see. But purple in a mountain is 
a sign of distance, because a mountain close to you is not 
purple, but green or grey. It may, indeed, be generally as- 
sumed that a tender or pale colour will more or less express 
distance, and a powerful or dark colour nearness ; but even 
this is not always so. Heathery hills will usually give a pale 
and tender purple near, and an intense and dark purple far 
away ; the rose colour of sunset on snow is pale on the snow 
at your feet, deep and full on the snow in the distance ; and 
the green of a Swiss lake is pale in the clear waves on the 
beach, but intense as an emerald in the sunstreak, six miles 
from shore. And in any case, when the foreground isin strong 
light, with much water about it, or white surface, casting in- 
tense reflections, all its colours may be perfectly delicate, pale, 
and faint ; while the distance, when it is in shadow, may re- 


354 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


lieve the whole foreground with intense darks of purple, blue 
green, or ultramarine blue. So that, on the whole, it is quite 
hopeless and absurd to expect any help from laws of “ aérial 
perspective.” Look for the natural effects, and set them down 
as fully as you can, and as faithfully, and never alter a colour 
because it won't look in its right place. Put the colour 
strong, if it be strong, though far off; faint, if it be faint, 
though close to you. Why should you suppose that Nature 
always means you to know exactly how far one thing is from 
another? She certainly intends you always to enjoy her col- 
ouring, but she does not wish you always to measure her 
space. You would be hard put to it, every time you painted 
the sun setting, if you had to express his 95,000,000 miles of 
distance in “‘ aérial perspective.” 

There is, however, I think, one law about distance, which 
has some claims to be considered a constant one: namely, 
that dullness and heaviness of colour are more or less indica- 
tive of nearness. All distant colouris pure colour: it may 
not be bright, but it is clear and lovely, not opaque nor soiled ; 
for the air and light coming between us and any earthy 
or imperfect colour, purify or harmonise it; hence a bad 
colourist is peculiarly incapable of expressing distance. I do 
not of course mean that you are to use bad eolours in your 
foreground by way of making it come forward ; but only that 
a failure in colour, there, will not put it out of its place ; 
while a failure in colour in the distance will at once do away 
with its remoteness: your dull-coloured foreground will still 
be a foreground, though ill-painted ; but your ill-painted 
distance will not be merely a dull distance,—it will be no 
distance at all. : 

I have only one thing more to advise you, namely, never to 
colour petulantly or hurriedly. You will not, indeed, be able, 
if you attend properly to your colouring, to get anything like 
the quantity of form you could in a chiaroscuro sketch ; never- 
theless, if you do not dash or rush at your work, nor do it 
lazily, you may always get enough form to be satisfactory. An 
extra quarter of an hour, distributed in quietness over the 
course of the whole study, may just make the difference 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 855 


between a quite intelligible drawing, and a slovenly and 
obscure one. If you determine well beforehand what outline 
each piece of colour is to have; and, when it is on the paper, 
guide it without nervousness, as far as you can, into the form 
required ; and then, after it is dry, consider thoroughly what 
touches are needed to complete it, before laying one of them 
on ; you will be surprised to find how masterly the work will 
soon look, as compared with a hurried or ill-considered sketch. 
In no process that I know of—least of all in sketching—can 
time be really gained by precipitation. It is gained only by 
caution; and gained in all sorts of ways: for not only truth 
of form, but force of light, is always added by an intelligent 
and shapely laying of the shadow colours. You may often 
make a simple flat tint, rightly gradated and edged, express a 
complicated piece of subject without a single retouch. The 
two Swiss cottages, for instance, with their balconies, and 
glittering windows, and general character of shingly eaves, are 
expressed in Fig.30., with 
one tint of grey, anda 
few dispersed spots and 
lines of it ; all of which 
you ought to be able to 
lay on without more than 
thrice dipping your 
brush, and without a 
single touch after the —__ 
tint is dry. By 
Here, then, for I cannot 

without coloured illustra- 

tions tell you more, I must leave you to follow out the subject 
for yourself, with such help as you may receive from the water- 
colour drawings accessible to you; or from any of the little 
treatises on their art which have been published lately by our 
water-colour painters.* But do not trust much to works of this 
kind. You may get valuable hints from them as to mixture 





* See, however, at the close of this letter, the notice of one more point 
connected with the management of colour, under the head ‘‘ Law of 
Harmony.” 


356 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


of colours ; and here and there you will find a useful artifice 
or process explained ; but nearly all such books are written 
only to help idle amateurs to a meretricious skill, and they 
are full of precepts and principles which may, for the most 
part, be interpreted by their precise negatives, and then acted 
upon with advantage. Most of them praise boldness, when 
the only safe attendant spirit of a beginner is caution ;— 
advise velocity, when the first condition of success is delibera- 
tion ;—and plead for generalisation, when all the foundations 
of power must be laid in knowledge of specialty. 

And now, in the last place, I have a few things to tell you 
respecting that dangerous nobleness of consummate art, —Com- 
position. For though it is quite unnecessary for you yet 
awhile to attempt it, and it may be inexpedient for you to at- 
tempt it at all, you ought to know what it means, and to look 
for and enjoy it in the art of others. 

Composition means, literally and simply, putting several 
things together, so as to make one thing out of them; the 
nature and goodness of which they all have a share in produc- 
ing. Thus a musician composes an air, by putting notes to- 
gether in certain relations ; a poet composes a poem, by put- 
ting thoughts and words in pleasant order; and a painter a 
picture, by putting thoughts, forms, and colours in pleasant 
order. 

In all these cases, observe, an intended unity must be the 
result of composition. A paviour cannot be said to compose 
the heap of stones which he empties from his cart, nor the 
sower the handful of seed which he scatters from his hand. 
It is the essence of composition that everything should be in 
a determined place, perform an intended part, and act, in 
that part, advantageously for everything that is connected 
with it. 

Composition, understood in this pure sense, is the type, in 
the arts of mankind, of the Providential government of the 
world.* It is an exhibition, in the order given to notes, or 
colours, or forms, of the advantage of perfect fellowship, dis- 


* See farther, on this subject, ‘‘ Modern Painters,” vol. iv. chap. viii 
§ 6. 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 357 


cipline, and contentment. In a well-composed air, no note, 
however short or low, can be spared, but the least is as neces- 
sary_as the greatest : no note, however prolonged, is tedious ; 
but the others prepare for, and are benefited by, its duration : 
no note, however high, is tyrannous ; the others prepare for 
and are benefited by, its exaltation : no note, however low, is 
overpowered, the others prepare for, and sympathise with, its 
humility: and the result is, that each and every note has a 
value in the position assigned to it, which by itself, it never 
possessed, and of which by separation from the others, it 
would instantly be deprived. 

Sunilarly, ina good poem, each word and thought enhances 
the value of those which precede and follow it ; and every syl- 
lable has a loveliness which depends not so much on its ab- 
stract sound as on its position. Look at the same word ina 
dictionary, and you will hardly recognise it. 

Much more in a great picture ; every line and colour is so 
arranged as to advantage the rest. None are inessential, 
however slight ; and none are independent, however forcible. 
It is not enough that they truly represent natural objects ; but 
they must fit into certain places, and gather into certain har- 
monious groups: so that, for instance, the red chimney of a 
cottage is not merely set in its place as a chimney, but that it 
may affect, in a certain way pleasurable to the eye, the pieces 
of green or blue in other parts of the picture ; and we ought 
to see thatthe work is masterly, merely by the positions and 
quantities of these patches of green, red, and blue, even at a 
distance which renders it perfectly impossible to determine 
what the colours represent: or to see whether the red isa 
chimney, or an old woman’s cloak ; and whether the blue is 
smoke, sky, or water. 

It seems to be appointed, in order to remind us, in all we 
do, of the great laws of Divine government and human polity, 
that composition in the arts should strongly affect every order 
of mind, however unlearned or thoughtless. Hence the pop- 
ular delight in rhythm and metre, and in simple musical 
melodies. But it is also appointed that power of composition 
in the fine artsshould be anexclusive attribute of great intellect, 


358 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


All men can more or less copy what they see, and, more of 
less, remember it : powers of reflection and investigation are 
also common to us all, so that the decision of inferiority in 
these rests only on questions of degree. A. has a better mem- 
ory than B., and C. reflects more profoundly than D. But 
the sift of composition is not given at all to more than one 
man ina thousand; in its highest range, it does not occur 
above three or four times in a century. 

It follows, from these general truths, that it is impossible to 
give rules which will enable you to compose. You might 
much more easily receive rules to enable you to be witty. If 
it were possible to be witty by rule, wit would cease to be 
either admirable or amusing: if it were possible to compose 
melody by rule, Mozart and Cimarosa need not have been 
born : if it were possible to compose pictures by rule, Titian 
and Veronese would be ordinary men. The essence of com- 
position lies precisely in the fact of its Leing unteachable, in 
its being the operation of an individual mind of range and 
power exalted above others. 

But though no one can invent by rule, there are some sim. 
ple laws of arrangement which it is well for you to know, be- 
cause, though they will not enable you to produce a good pict- 
ure, they will often assist you to set forth what goodness may 
be in your work in a more telling way than you could have 
done otherwise ; and by tracing them in the work of good 
composers, you may better understand the grasp of their 
imagination, and the power it possesses over their materials. 
I shall briefly state the chief of these laws. 


1. THE LAW OF PRINCIPALITY. 


The great object of composition being always to secure 
unity ; that is, to make out of many things one whole; the 
first mode in which this can be effected is, by determining 
that one feature shall be more important than all the rest, and 
that the others shall group with it in subordinate positions. 

This is the simplest law of ordinary ornamentation. Thus 
the group of two leaves, a, Fig. 31., is unsatisfactory, because 
it has no leading leaf ; but that at b is prettier, because it has 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 359 


a head or master leaf; and c more satisfactory still, because 
the subordination of the other members to this head leaf is 
made more manifest by their 


gradual loss of size as they fall .- | 
back from it. Hence part of Y : 
the pleasure we have in the 

@ 5 c 


Greek honeysuckle ornament, 
and such others. 

Thus, also, good pictures have always one light larger or 
brighter than the other lights, or one figure more prominent 
than the other figures, or one mass of colour dominant over all 
the other masses ; and in general you will find it much bene- 
fit your sketch if you manage that there shall be one light on 
the cottage wall, or one blue cloud in the sky, which may attract 
the eye as leading light, or leading gloom, above all others. 
But the observance of the rule is often so cunningly concealed 
by the great composers, that its force is hardly at first trace- 
able ; and you will generally find that they are vulgar pictures 
in which the law is strikingly manifest. This may be simply 
illustrated by musical melody ; for instance, in such phrases 
as this : 


Fie, 31. 





one note (here the upper a) rules the whole passage, and has 
the full energy of it concentrated in itself. Such passages, 
corresponding to completely subordinated compositions in 
painting, are apt to be wearisome if often repeated. But in 
such a phrase as this: 





it is very difficult to say, which is the principal note. The a 
in the last bar is lightly dominant, but there is a very equal 


360 THH ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


current of power running through the whole; and such pas- 
sages rarely weary. And this principle holds through vast 
scales of arrangement ; so that in the grandest compositions, 
such as Paul Veronese’s Marriage in Cana, or Raphael’s Dis- 
puta, it is not easy to fix at once on the principal figure ; and 
very commonly the figure which is really chief does not catch 
the eye at first, but is gradually felt to be more and more 
conspicuous as we gaze. Thus in Titian’s grand composition 
of the Cornaro Family, the figure meant to be principal is a 
youth of fifteen or sixteen, whose portrait it was evidently the 
painter’s object to make as interesting as possible. But a 
grand Madonna, and a St. George with a drifting banner, and 
many figures more, occupy the centre of the picture, and first 
catch the eye ; little by little we are led away from them to a 
gleam of pearly light in the lower corner, and find that, from 
the head which it shines upon, we can turn our eyes no more. 

As, in every good picture, nearly all laws of design are more 
or less exemplified, it will, on the whole, be an easier way of 
explaining them to analyse one composition thoroughly, than 
to give instances from various works. I shall therefore take 
one of Turner’s simplest ; which will allow us, so to speak, 
easily to decompose it, and illustrate each law by it as we 
proceed. 

Figure 32.is a rude sketch of the arrangement of the whole 
subject ; the old bridge over the Moselle at Coblentz, the 
town of Coblentz on the right, Ehrenbreitstein on the left. 
The leading or master feature is, of course the tower on the 
bridge. It is kept from being too principal by an important 
group on each side of it; the boats, on the right, and Ehren- 
breitstein beyond. The boats are large in mass, and more 
forcible in colour, but they are broken into small divisions, 
while the tower is simple, and therefore it still leads. Ehren- 
breitstein is noble in its mass, but so reduced by aérial per- 
spective of colour that it cannot contend with the tower, which 
therefore holds the eye, and becomes the key of the picture 
We shall see presently how the very objects which seem at 
first to contend with it for the mastery are made, occultly to 
increase its preéminence. 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 361 


2. THE LAW OF REPETITION. 


Another important means of expressing unity is to mark 
some kind of sympathy among the different objects, and per- 
haps the pleasantest, because most surprising, kind of sym- 
pathy, is when one group imitates or repeats another ; not in 
the way of balance or symmetry, but subordinately, like a far- 
away and broken echo of it. Prout has insisted much on this 
law in all his writings on composition ; and I think it is even 





more authoritatively present in the minds of most great com- 
posers than the law of principality. It is quite curious to see 
the pains that Turner sometimes takes to echo an important 
passage of colour ; in the Pembroke Castle for instance, there 
are two fishing-boats, one with ared, and another with a white 
sail. In a line with them, on the beach, are two fish in pre. 
cisely the same relative positions ; one red and one white. It 
is observable that he uses the artifice chiefly in pictures where 
he wishes to obtain an expression of repose : in my notice of 
the plate of Scarborough, in the series of the ‘“ Harbours of 
England,” I have already had occasion to dwell on this point ; 


362 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


and I extract in the note * one or two sentences which explain 
the principle. In the composition I have chosen for our illus- 
tration, this reduplication 1s employed to a singular extent, 
The tower, or leading feature, is first repeated by the low echo 
of it to the left ; put your finger over this lower tower, and see 
how the picture is spoiled. Then the spires of Coblentz are 
all arranged in couples (how they are arranged in reality does 
not matter ; when we are composing 4 great picture, we must 
play the towers about till they come right, as fearlessly as if 
they were chessmen instead of cathedrals), The dual arrange- 
ment of these towers would have been too easily seen, were it 
not for a little one which pretends to make a triad of the last 
group on the right, but is so faint as hardly to be discernible : 
it just takes off the attention from the artifice, helped in doing 
so by the mast at the head of the boat, which, however, has 
instantly its own duplicate put at the stern.t Then there is 
the large boat near, and its echo beyond it. That echo is di- 
vided into two again, and each of those two smaller boats has 
two figures in it; while two figures are also sitting together 
on the great rudder that lies half in the water, and half aground. 
Then, finally, the great mass of Ehrenbreitstein, which ap- 
pears at first to have no answering form, has almost its fac- 
simile in the bank on which the girl is sitting ; this bank is 
as absolutely essential to the completion of the picture as any 
object in the whole series. All this is done to deepen the ef- 
fect of repose. 

Symmetry or the balance of parts or masses In nearly equal 
opposition, is one of the conditions of treatment under the 


* “(Tn general, throughout Nature, reflection and repetition are peace- 
ful things, associated with the idea of quiet succession in events, that 
one day should be like another day, or one history the repetition of an- 
other history, being more or less results of quietness, while dissimilarity 
and non-succession are results of interfefence and disquietude.. Thus, 
though an echo actually increases the quantity of sound heard, its rep- 
etition of the note or syllable gives an idea of calmness attainable in no 
other way ; hence also the feeling of calm given to a landscape by the 
voice of a cuckoo.” 

+ This is obscure in the rude woodcut, the masts being so delicate 
that they are confused among the lines of reflection. In the original 
they have orange light upon them, relieved against purple behind. 


’ 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 363 


law of Repetition. For the opposition, in a symmetrical ob- 
ject, is of like things reflecting each other ; it is not the bal- 
ance of contrary natures (like that of day and night) but of 
like natures or like forms ; one side of a leaf being set like the 
reflection of the other in water. 

Symmetry in Nature is, however, never formal nor accurate. 
She takes the greatest care to secure some difference between 
the corresponding things or parts of things; and an approx- 
imation to accurate symmetry is only permitted in animals 
because their motions secure perpetual difference between the 
balancing parts. Stand before a mirror; hold your arms in 
precisely the same position at each side, your head upright 
your body straight ; divide your hair exactly in the middle, 
and get it as nearly as youcan into exactly the same shape 
over each ear, and you will see the effect of accurate symme- 
try ; you will see, no less, how all grace and power in the 
human form result from the interference of motion and life 
with symmetry, and from the reconciliation of its balance with 
its changefulness. Your position, as seen in the mirror, is 
the highest type of symmetry as understood by modern ar- 
chitects. | 

In many sacred compositions, living symmetry, the balance 
of harmonious opposites, is one of the profoundest sources of 
their power : almost any works of the early painters, Angelico, 
Perugino, Giotto, &c., will furnish you with notable instances 
of it. The Madonna of Peruginoin the National Gallery, with 
the angel Michael on one side and Raphael on the other, is as 
beautiful an example as you can have. 

In landscape, the principle of balance is more or less carried 
out, in proportion to the wish of the painter to express dis- 
ciplined calmness. In bad compositions as in bad _ arcli- 
tecture, it is formal, a tree on one side answering a tree on 
the other ; but in good compositions, as in graceful statues, it 
is always easy, and sometimes hardly traceable. In the Co- 
blentz, however, you cannot have much difficulty in seeing how 
the boats on one side of the tower and the figures on the other 
are set in nearly equal balance ; the tower, as a central mass 
uniting both. 


364 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING, 


3. THE LAW OF CONTINUITY. 


Another important and pleasurable way of expressing unity, 
is by giving some orderly succession to a number of objects 
more or less similar. And this succession is most interesting 
when it is connected with some gradual change in the aspect 
or character of the objects. Thus the succession of the pillars 
of a cathedral aisle is most interesting when they retire in 
perspective, becoming more and more obscure in distance ; so 
the succession of mountain promontories one behind another, 
on the flanks of a valley ; so the succession of clouds, fading 
farther and farther towards the horizon ; each promontory 
and each cloud being of different shape, yet all evidently fol- 
lowing in a calm and appointed order. If there be no change 
at allin the shape or size of the objects, there is no continuity ; 
there is only repetition—monotony. It is the change in shape 
which suggests the idea of their being individually free, and 
able to escape, if they liked, from the law that rules them, 
and yet submitting to it. I will leave our chosen illustrative 
composition for a moment to take up another, still more ex- 
pressive of this law. It is one of Turner’s most tender studies, 
a sketch on Calais Sands at sunset ; so delicate in the expres- 
sion of wave and cloud, that it is of no use for me to try to 
reach it with any kind of outline in a woodcut ; but the rough 
sketch, Fig. 33., is enough to give an idea of its arrangement. 
The aim of the painter has been to give the intensest expres- 
sion of repose, together with the enchanted lulling, monoto- 
nous motion of cloud and wave, All the clouds are moving 
in innumerable ranks after the sun, meeting towards the 
point in the horizon where he has set; and the tidal waves 
gain in winding currents upon the sand, with that stealthy 
haste in which they cross each other so quietly, at their edges : 
just folding one over another as they meet, like a little piece 
of ruffled silk, and leaping up a little as two children kiss and 
clap their hands, and then going on again, each in its silent 
hurry, drawing pointed arches on the sand as their thin edges 
intersect in parting ; but all this would not have been enough 
expressed without the line of the old pier-timbers, black with 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 365 


weeds, strained and bent by the storm waves, and now seem- 
ing to stoop in following one another, like dark ghosts escap- 
ing slowly from the cruelty of the pursuing sea. 

I need not, I hope, point out to the reader the illustration 
of this law of continuance in the subject chosen for our gen- 
eral illustration. It was simply that gradual succession of the 
retiring arches of the bridge which induced Turner to paint 
the subject at all; and it was this same principle which led 
him always to seize on subjects including long bridges where- 
ever he could find them; but especially, observe, unequal 





Fie. 33. 


bridges, having the highest arch at one side rather than at 
the centre. There is a reason for this, irrespective of general 
laws of composition, and connected with the nature of rivers, 
which I may as well stop a minute to tell you about, and let 
you rest from the study of composition. 

All rivers, small or large, agree in one character, they like 
to lean a little on one side: they cannot bear to have their 
channels deepest in the middle, but will always, if they can, 
have one bank to sun themselves upon, and another to get 
cool under ; one shingly shore to play over, where they may 
be shallow, and foolish, and childlike, and another steep shore, 
under which they can pause, and purify themselves, and get 


366 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


their strength of waves fully together for due occasion. 
Rivers in this way are just like wise men, who keep one side 
of their life for play, and another for work ; and can be brill- 
iant, and chattering, and transparent, when they are at ease, 
and yet take deep counsel on the other side when they set 
themselves to their main purpose. And rivers are just in this 
divided, also, like wicked and good men : the good rivers have 
serviceable deep places all along their banks, that ships can 
sail in ; but the wicked rivers go scoopingly irregularly under 
their banks until they get full of strangling eddies, which no 
boat can row oyer without being twisted against the rocks ; 
and pools like wells, which no one can get out of but the 
water-kelpie that lives at the bottom ;—but, wicked or good, 
the rivers all agree in having two kinds of sides, Now the 
natural way in which a village stonemason therefore throws 
a bridge over a strong stream is, of course, to build a great 
door to let the cat through, and little doors to let the kittens 
through ; a great arch for the great current, to give it room 
in flood time, and little arches for the little currents along 
the shallow shore. This, even without any prudential respect 
for the floods of the great current, he would do in simple 
economy of work and stone ; for the smaller your arches are, 
the less material you want on their flanks. Two arches over 
the same span of river, supposing the butments are at the 
same depth, are cheaper than one, and that by a great deal ; 
so that, where the current is shallow, the village mason makes 
his arches many and low; as the water gets deeper, and it 
becomes troublesome to build his piers up from the bottom, 
he throws his arches wider ; at last he comes to the deep 
stream, and, as he cannot build at-the bottom of that, he 
throws his largest arch over it with a leap, and with another 
little one or so gains the opposite shore. Of course as arches 
are wider they must be higher, or they will not stand ; so the 
roadway must rise as the arches widen. And thus we have 
the general type of bridge, with its highest and widest arch 
towards one side, and a train of minor arches running over 
the flat shore on the other ; usually a steep bank at the river- 
side next the large arch ; always, of course, a flat shore on 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 367. 


the side of the small ones ; and the bend of the river assuredly 
concave towards this flat, cutting round, with a sweep into 
the steep bank ; or, if there is no steep bank, still assuredly 
cutting into the shore at the steep end of the bridge. 

Now this kind of bridge, sympathising, as it does, with the 
spirit of the river, and marking the nature of the thing it has 
to deal with and conquer, is the ideal of a bridge ; and all en- 
deayours to do the thing in a grand engineer’s manner, with 
a level roadway and equal arches, are barbarous ; not only be- 
cause all monotonous forms are ugly in themselves, but be- 
cause the mind perceives at once that there has been cost 
uselessly thrown away for the sake of formality.* 

Well, to return to our continuity. We see that the Tur- 
nerian bridge in Fig. 32. is of the absolutely perfect type, and 
is still farther interesting by having its main arch crowned by 
a watch-tower. But as I want you to note especially what 
perhaps was not the case in the real bridge, but is entirely 
Turner’s doing, you will find that though the arches diminish 
gradually, not one is regularly diminished—they are all of 


* The cost of art in getting a bridge level is always lost, for you must 
get up to the height of the central arch at any rate, and you only can 
make the whole bridge level by putting the hill farther back, and pre- 
tending to have got rid of it when you have not, but have only wasted 
money in building an unnecessaryembankment. Of course, the bridge 
should not be difficultly or dangerously steep, but the necessary slope, 
whatever it may be, should be in the bridge itself, as far as the bridge 
can take it, and not pushed aside into the approach,.as in our Waterloo 
road; the only rational excuse for doing which is that when the slope 
must be long it is inconvenient to put ona drag at the top of the bridge, 
and that any restiveness of the horse is more dangerous on the bridge 
than on the embankment. To this I answer: first, it is not more dan- 
gerous in reality, though it looks so, for the bridge is always guarded by 
an effective parapet, but the embankment is sure to have no parapet, or 
only a-useless rail; and secondly, that it is better to have the slope on 
the bridge, and make the roadway wide in proportion, so as to be quite 
safe, because a little waste of space on the river is no loss, but your 
wide embankment at the side loses good ground ; and so my picturesque 
bridges are right as well as beautiful, and I hope to see them built again 
some day, instead of the frightful straight-backed things which we 
fancy are fine, and accept from the pontifical rigidities of the engineer 
ing mind. 


368° THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


different shapes and sizes: you cannot see this clearly in Fig, 
32., but in the larger diagram, Fig. 34., opposite, you will 
with ease. This is indeed also part of the ideal of a bridge, 
because the lateral currents near the shore are of course ir- 
regular in size, and a simple builder would naturally vary his 
arches accordingly ; and also, if the bottom was rocky, build 
his piers where the rocks came. But it is not as a part of 
bridge ideal, but as a necessity of all noble composition, that 
this irregularity is introduced by Turner. It at once raises 
the object thus treated from the lower or vulgar unity of rigid 
law to the greater unity of clouds, and waves, and trees, and 
human souls, each different, each obedient, and each in har- 
monious service. 


4. THE LAW OF CURVATURE. 


There is, however, another point to be noticed in this bridge 
of Turner’s. Not only does it slope away unequally at its 
sides, but it slopes in a gradual though very subtle curve. 
And if you substitute a straight line for this curve (drawing 
one with a rule from the base of the tower on each side to the 
ends of the bridge, in Fig. 34., and effacing the curve), you 
will instantly see that the design has suffered grievously. 
You may ascertain, by experiment, that all beautiful objects 
whatsoever are thus terminated by delicately curved lines, ex- 
cept where the straight line is indispensable to their use or 
stability : and that when a complete system of straight lines, 
throughout the form, is necessary to that stability, as in erys- 
tals, the beauty, if any exists, is in colour and transparency, 
not in form. Cut out the shape of any crystal you like, in 
white wax or wood, and put it beside a white lily, and you 
will feel the force of the curvature in its purity, irrespective 
of added colour, or other interfering elements of beauty. 

Well, as curves are more beautiful than straight lines, it is 
necessary to a good composition that its continuities of object, 
mass, or colour should be, if possible, in curves, rather than 
straight lines or angular ones. Perhaps one of the simplest 
and prettiest examples of a graceful continuity of this kind is 
in the line traced at any moment by the corks of a net as it. 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 369 


Fia. 34. 





370 VHE HLEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


is being drawn: nearly every person is more or less attracted 
by the beauty of the dotted line. Now it is almost always 
possible, not only to secure such a continuity in the arrange- 
ment or boundaries of objects which, like these bridge arches 
or the corks of the net, are actually connected with each other, 
but—and this is a still more noble and interesting kind of 
continuity—among features which appear at first entirely 
separate. Thus the towers of Ehrenbreitstein, on the left, in 
Fig. 32., appear at first independent of each other; but when 





\ 


Se, Yh }) 


I give their profile, on a larger scale, Fig. 35., the reader may 
easily perceive that there is a subtle cadence and harmony 
among them. ‘The reason of this is, that they are all bounded 
by one grand curve, traced by the dotted line; out of the 
seven towers, four precisely touch this curve, the others only 
falling back from it here and there to keep the eye from dis 
covering it too easily. 

And it is not only always possible to obtain continuities of 
this kind : it is, in drawing large forest or mountain forms eés- 


e- 
»? 
? 


ie 
- 


"=< 


Fie, 35. 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. oil 


sential to truth. The towers of Ehrenbreitstein might or 
might not in reality fall into such a curve, but assuredly the 
basalt rock on which they stand did ; for all mountain forms 
not cloven into absolute precipice, nor covered by straight 
slopes of shales, are more or less governed by these great 
curves, it being one of the aims of Nature in all her work to 
produce them. The reader must already know this, if he has 
been able to sketch at all among the mountains; if not, let 
him merely draw for himself, carefully, the outlines of any 
low hills accessible to him, where they are tolerably steep, or 
of the woods which grow on them. The steeper shore of the 
Thames at Maidenhead, or any of the downs at Brighton or 
Dover, or, even nearer, about Croydon (as Addington Hills), 
are easily accessible to a Londoner; and he will soon find not 
only how constant, but how graceful the curvature is. Grace- 
ful curvature is distinguished from ungraceful by two charac- 
ters: first, its moderation, that is to say, its close approach to 
straightness in some parts of its course ;* and, secondly, by 
its variation, that is to say, its never remaining equal in de- 
gree at different parts of its course. 

This variation is itself twofold in all good curves. 

A. There is, first, a steady change through the whole line 
from less to more curvature, or more to less, so that no part 


Fra. 36. 


of the line is a segment of a circle, or can be drawn by com- 
passes in any way whatever. Thus, in Fig. 36.,a is a bad 
curve, because it is part of a circle, and is therefore monoto- 
nous throughout; but b is a good curve, because it continu- 
ally changes its direction as it proceeds. 

*T cannot waste space here by reprinting what I have said in other 
books: but the reader ought, if possible, to refer to the notices of this 
part of our subject in ‘‘Modern Painters,” vol. iv. chap. xviii, and 
“Stones of Venice,’ vol. iii. chap. i § 8. 


372 THE HLEMENTS OF DRAWING... 


The jirst difference between good and bad drawing of trea 
boughs consists in observance of this fact. Thus, when I put 
leaves on the line b, as in Fig. 37., you 
can immediately feel the springiness 
of character dependent on the change- 
fulness of the curve. You may put 
leaves on the other line for yourself, 
but you will find you cannot make a right tree spray of it. 
For ail tree boughs, large or small, as well as all noble nat- 
ural lines whatsoever, agree in this character; and it is a 
point of primal necessity that 
your eye should always seize 
and your hand trace it. Here 
are two more portions of good 
curves, with leaves put on them 
at the extremities instead of the 
flanks, Fig. 388. ; and two show- 
ing the arrangement of masses 
of foliage seen a little farther 
off, Fig. 39., which you may in 
like manner amuse yourself by 
turning into segments of circles 
—you will see with what result. I hope, however, you have 
beside you by this time, many good studies of tree boughs 

carefully made, in which you may study 


variations of curvature in their most 
SS complicated and lovely forms.* 

B. Not only does every good curve 
vary in general tendency, but it is 
modulated, as it proceeds, by myriads 

gt of subordinate curves. Thus the out- 
lines of a tree trunk are never as at a, 
Fig. 40, but asat b. So also in waves, 
clouds, and all other nobly formed masses. Thus another 
essential difference between good and bad drawing, or good 
and bad sculpture, depends on the quantity and refinement 








Fia. 38. 


Fra. 39. 


_* Tf you happen to be reading at this part of the book, without having 
gone through any previous practice, turn back to the sketch of the 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 373 


of minor curvatures carried, by good work, into the great lines. 
Strictly speaking, however, this is not variation in large curves, 
but composition of large curves out of 

small ones ; itis an increase in the quantity 

of the beautiful element, but not a change 

an ts nature. 


5. THE LAW OF RADIATION, 


We have hitherto been concerned only 
with the binding of our various objects 
into beautiful lines or processions. The 
next point we have to consider is, how we 
may unite these lines or processions them- 
selves, so as to make groups of them. 

Now, there are two kinds of harmonies of 
lines. One in which, moving more or less 
side by side, they variously, but evidently 
with consent, retire from or approach each 
other, intersect or oppose each other : cur- 
rents of melody in music, for different 
voices, thus approach and cross, fall and 
rise, in harmony ; so the waves of the sea, 
as they approach the shore, flow into one 7 
another or cross, but with a great unity x 
through all; and so various lines of com- 
position often flow harmoniously through 
and across each other in a picture. But the most simple and 
perfect connexion of lines is by radiation; that is, by their 
all springing from one point, or closing towards it: and this 
harmony is often,in Nature almost always, united with the 
other ; as the boughs of trees, though they intersect and play 
amongst each other irregularly, indicate by their general ten- 
dency their origin from one root. An essential part of the 
beauty of all vegetable formis in this radiation: it is seen 
most simply in a single flower or leaf, as in a convolvulus 


Fia. 40, 


ramification of stone pine, Fig. 4. page 30,, and examine the curves of 
its boughs one by one, trying them by the eonditions here stated under 
the heads A. and B, 


374 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


bell, or chestnut leaf; but more beautifully in the compli- 
cated arrangements of the large boughs and sprays. For 
a leaf is only a flat piece of radiation ; but the tree throws its 
branches on all sides, and even in every profile view of it, 
which presents a radiation more or less correspondent to that 
of its leaves, it is more beautiful, because varied by the free- 
dom of the separate branches. I believe it has been ascer- 
tained that, in all trees, the angle at which, in their leaves, 
the lateral ribs are set on their central rib is approximately 
the same at which the branches leave the 
ereat stem ; and thus each section of the 
tree would present a kind of magnified 
view of its own leaf, were it not for the in- 
terfering force of gravity on the masses of 
foliage. This force in proportion to their 
age, and the lateral leverage upon them, 
bears them downwards at the extremities, 
so that, as before noticed, the lower the 
bough grows on the stem, the more it droops 
(Fig. 17, p. 295,); besides this, nearly all 
beautiful trees have a tendency to divide into two or more 
principal masses, which give a prettier and more complicated 
symmetry than if one stem ran all the way up the centre. 
Fig. 41. may thus be considered the simplest type of tree 
radiation, as opposed to leaf radiation. In this figure, how- 
ever, all secondary ramification is unrepresented, for 
the sake of simplicity ; but if we take one half of 
such a tree, and merely give two secondary branches 
to each main branch (as represented in the general 
branch structure shown at b, Fig. 18., p. 296), we 
shall have the form, Fig. 42. This I consider the 
perfect general type of tree structure ; and it is curi- 
ously connected with certain forms of Greek, Byzan- 
tine, and Gothic ornamentation, into the discussion 
of which, however, we must not enter here. It will be ob- 
served, that both in Figs. 41. and 42. all the branches so spring 
from the main stem as very nearly to suggest their united 
radiation from the root x. ‘This is by no means universally 








R 
Fra, 42, 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 375 


the case ; but if the branches do not bend towards a point in 
the root, they at least converge to some point or other. In 
the examples in Fig. 43., the mathematical centre of curvature, 
a, is thus, in one case, on the 
ground at some distance from 
the root, and in the other, near 
the top of the tree. Half, only, 
of each tree is given, for the 
sake of clearness: Tig. 44 
gives both sides of anotherex- 4 
ample, in which the origins of ¢“~ 
curvature are below the root. 
As the positions of such points 
may be varied without end, and as the arrangement of the lines 
is also farther complicated by the fact of the boughs springing 
for the most part in a spiral order round the tree, 
and at proportionate distances, the systems of curva- 
ture which regulate the form of vegetation are quite 
infinite. Infinite is a word easily said, and easily 
written, and people do not always mean it when they 
say it; in this case I do mean it; the number of 
, systems is incalculable, and even to furnish any 
thing like a representative number of types, I should 
| have to give several hundreds of figures such as 
Fig. 44.* 

Thus far, however, we have only been speaking 
of the great relations of stem and branches. The 
forms of the branches themselves are regulated by 
still more subtle laws, for they occupy an interme- 
diate position between the form of the tree and of 
the leaf. The leaf has a flat ramification ; the tree 
a completely rounded one ; the bough is neither rounded nor 
flat, but has a structure exactly balanced between the two, in 
a half-flattened, half-rounded flake, closely resembling in shape 
one of the thick leavesof an artichoke or the flake of a fir cone ; 
by combination forming the solid mass of the tree, as the 





Fie. 43. 





*The reader, I hope, observes always that every line in these figures 
is itself one of varying curvature, and cannot be drawn by compasses. 


Fal 


376 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


leaves compose the artichoke head. I have before pointed out 
to you the general resemblance of these branch flakes to an 
extended hand ; but they may be more accurately represented 
by the ribs ofa boat. Ifyou ean imagine a very broad-headed 
and flattened boat applied 
by its keel to the end of a 
main branch,* as in Fig. 
45., the lines which its ribs 
will take, and the general 
contour of it, as seen in dif- 
ferent directions, from above and below ; and from one side and 
another, will give you the closest approximation to the per- 
spectives and foreshortenings of a well-grown branch-flake. 
Fig. 25. above, page 316., is an unharmed and unrestrained 
shoot of healthy young oak ; and if you compare it with Fig. 
45., you will understand at once the action of the lines of leaf- 
age; the boat only failing as a type in that its ribs are too 
nearly parallel to each other at the sides, while the bough 
sends all its ramification well forwards, rounding to the head, 
that it may accomplish its part 


in the outer form of the whole y ) 





tree, yet always securing the 
compliance with the great uni- 
versal. law that the branches 
nearest the root bend most 
back ; and, of course, throw- 
ing some always back as well as forwards ; the appearance of 
reversed action being much increased, and rendered more 
striking and beautiful, by perspective. Figure 25. shows the 
perspective of such a bough as it is seen from below ; Fig. 46, 
gives rudely the look it would have from above. 

You may suppose, if you have not already discovered, what 


Fia, 40. 


*Thope the reader understands that these woodcuts are merely fac~ 
similes of the sketches I make at the side of my paper to illustrate my 
meaning as I write—often sadly scrawled if I want toa get on to some- 
thing else. This one is really a little too careless; but it would take 
more time and trouble to make a proper drawing of so odd a boat than 
the matter is worth. It will answer the purpose well enough as it is. 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 377 


subtleties of perspective and light and shade are involved in 
the drawing of these branch-fiakes, as you see them in differ- 
ent directions and actions; now raised, now depressed ; 
touched on the edges by the wind, or lifted up and bent back 
so as to show all the white under surfaces of the leaves shiver- 
ing in light, as the bottom of a boat rises white with spray at 
the surge-crest ; or drooping in quietness towards the dew of 
the grass beneath them in windless mornings, or bowed down 
under oppressive grace of deep-charged snow. Snow time, by 
the way, is one of the best for practice in the placing of tree 
masses ; but you will only be able to understand them thor- 
oughly by beginning with a single bough and a few leaves 
placed tolerably even, asin Fig. 38. page 372. First one with 
three leaves, a central and two lateral ones, as at a; then with 
five, as at b, and so on; directing your whole attention to the 
expression, both by contour and light and shade, of the boat- 
like arrangements, which in your earlier studies, will have 
been a good deal confused, partly owing to your inexperience, 
and partly to the depth of shade, or absolute blackness of mass 
required in those studies. 

One thing more remains to be noted, and I will let you out 
of the wood. You see that in every generally representative 
figure I have surrounded the radiating branches with a dotted 
line: such lines do indeed terminate every vegetable form ; 
and you see that they are themselves beautiful curves, which, 
according to their flow, and the width or narrowness of the 
spaces they enclose, characterize the species of tree or leaf, 
and express its free or formal action, its grace of youth or 
weight of age. So that, throughout all the freedom of her 
wildest foliage, Nature is resolved on expressing an encom- 
passing limit ; and marking a unity in the whole tree, caused 
not only by the rising of its branches from a common root, 
but by their joining in. one work, and being bound by a com- 
mon law. And having ascertained this, let us turn back for a 
moment to a point in leaf structure which, I doubt not, you 
must already have observed in your earlier studies, but which 
it is well to state here, as connected with the unity of the 
branches in the great trees. You must have noticed, I should 


378 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


think, that whenever a leaf is compound,—that is to say, di- 
vided into other leaflets which in any way repeat or imitate 
the form of the whole leaf,—those leaflets are not symmetrical, 
as the whole leaf is, but always smaller on the side towards 
the point of the great leaf, so as to express their subordination 
to it, and show, even when they are pulled off, that they are 
not small independent leaves, but members of one large leaf- 

Fig. 47., which is a block-plan of a leaf of columbine, with- 
out its minor divisions on the edges, will illustrate the prin- 
ciple clearly. It is composed of a central large mass, A, and 
two lateral ones, of which the one on the right only is lettered, 





B. Each of these masses is again composed of three others, 
a central and two lateral ones; but observe, the minor one, a 
of A, is balanced equally by its opposite ; but the minor 6 1 
of B is larger than its opposite b 2. Again, each of these 
minor masses is divided into three; but while the central 
mass, A of A, is symmetrically divided, the B of B is unsym- 
metrical, its largest side-lobe being lowest. Again 6 2, the 
lobe ¢ 1 (its lowest lobe in relation to B) is larger than ¢ 2; 
and so also in’ 1. So that universally one lobe of a lateral 
leaf is always larger than the other, and the smaller lobe is 
that which is nearer the central mass; the lower leaf, as it 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 379 


were by courtesy, subduing some of its own dignity or power, 
in the immediate presence of the greater or captain leaf; and 
always expressing, therefore, its own subordination and sec- 
ondary character. This law is carried out even in single 
leaves. As far as I know, the upper half, towards the point 
of the spray, is always the smaller ; and a slightly different 
curve, more convex at the springing, is used for the lower 
side, giving an exquisite variety to the form of the whole leaf ; 
so that one of the chief elements in the beauty of every sub- 
ordinate leaf throughout the tree, is made to depend on its 
confession of its own lowliness and subjection. 

And now, if we bring together in one view the principles 
we have ascertained in trees, we shall find they may be 
summed under four great laws; and that all perfect * vege- 
table form is appointed to express these four laws in noble 
balance of authority. 

1. Support from one living root. 

2. Radiation, or tendency of force from some one given 
point, either in the root, or in some stated connexion with it. 

3. Liberty of each bough to seek its own livelihood and 
happiness according to its needs, by irregularities of action 
both in its play and its work, either stretching out to get its 
required nourishment from light and rain, by finding some 
sufficient breathing-place among the other branches, or knot- 
ting and gathering itself up to get strength for any load which 
its fruitful blossoms may lay upon it, and for any stress of its 
storm-tossed luxuriance of leaves; or playing hither and 
thither as the fitful sunshine may tempt its young shoots, in 
their undecided states of mind about their future life. 

4. Imperative requirement of each bough to stop within 
certain limits, expressive of its kindly fellowship and frater- 


* Imperfect vegetable form I consider that which is in its nature de- 
pendent, asin runners and climbers; or which is susceptible of continua] 
injury without materially losing the power of giving pleasure by its 
aspect, as in the case of the smaller grasses. I have not, of course, space 
here to explain these minor distinctions, but the laws above stated apply 
to allthe more important trees and shrubs likely to be familiar to the 
student. 


380 THE HKLEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


nity with the boughs in its neighborhood ; and to work with 
them according to its power, magnitude, and state of health, 
to bring out the general perfectness of the great curve, and 
circumferent stateliness of the whole tree. 

I think I may leave you, unhelped, to work out the moral 
analogies of these laws ; you may, perhaps, however, be a little 
puzzled to see the meeting of the second one. It typically 
expresses that healthy human actions should spring radiantly 
(like rays) from some single heart motive; the most beautiful 
systems of action taking place when this motive lies at the 
root of the whole life, and the action is clearly seen to proceed 
from it; while also many beautiful secondary systems of action 
taking place from motives not so deep or central, but in some 
beautiful subordinate connexion with the central or life motive. 

The other laws, if you think over them, you will find equally 
significative ; and as you draw trees more and more in their 
various states of health and hardship, you will be every day 
more struck by the beauty of the types they present of the 
truths most essential for mankind to know ;* and you will see 
what this vegetation of the earth, which is necessary to our 
life, first, as purifying the air for us and then as food, and just 
as necessary to our joy in all places of the earth,—what these 
trees and leaves, I say, are meant to teach us as we contem- 
plate them, and read or hear their lovely language, written or 
spoken for us, not in frightful black letters, nor in dull sen- 

* There is a very tender lesson of this kind in the shadows of leaves 
upon the ground ; shadows which are the most likely of all to attract 
attention, by their pretty play and change. If you examine them, yon 
will find that the shadows do not take the forms of the leaves, but that, 
through each interstice, the light falls, at a little distance, in the form 
of a round or oval spot ; that is to say, it produces the image of the sun 
itself, cast either vertically or obliquely, in circle or ellipse according to 
the slope of the ground. Of course the sun’s rays produce the same 
effect, when they fall through any small aperture: but the openings be- 
tween leaves are the only ones likely to show it to an ordinary observer, 
or to attract his attention to it by its frequency, and lead him to think 
what this type may signify respecting the greater Sun ; and how it may 
show us that, even when the opening through which the earth receives 


light is too small to let us see the Sun himself, the ray of light that 
enters, if it comes straight from Him, will still bear with it His image. 


ON COLOULK AND COMPOSITION. 381 


tences, but in fair green and shadowy shapes of waving words, 
and blossomed brightness of odoriferous wit, and sweet whis- 
pers of unintrusive wisdom, and playful morality. 

Well, I am sorry myself to leave the wood, whatever my 
reader may be ; but leave it we must, or we shall compose no 
more pictures to-day. 

This law of radiation, then, enforcing unison of action in 
arising from, or proceeding to, some given point, is perhaps, 
of all principles of composition, the most influential in pro- 
ducing the beauty of groups of form. Other laws make them 
forcible or interesting, but this generally is chief in rendering 
them beautiful. In the arrangement of masses in pictures, it 
is constantly obeyed by the great composers ; but, like the 
law of principality, with careful concealment of its imperative- 
ness, the point to which the lines of main curvature are 
directed being very often far away out of the picture. Some- 
times, however, a system of curves will be employed definitely 
to exalt, by their concurrence, the value of some leading ob- 
ject, and then the law becomes traceable enough. 

Jn the instance before us, the principal object being, as we 
have seen, the tower on the bridge, Turner has determined 
that his system of curvature should have its origin in the top 
of this tower. The diagram Fig. 34. page 369, compared with 
Fig. 32. page 361, will show how thisis done. One curve joins 
the two towers, and is continued by the back of the figure 
sitting on the bank into the piece of bent timber. This is a 
limiting curve of great importance, and Turner has drawn a 
considerable part of it with the edge of the timber very care- 
fully, and then led the eye up tothe sitting girl by some white 
spots and indications of a ledge in the bank ; then the passage 
to the tops of the towers cannot be missed. 

The next curve is begun and drawn carefully for half an 
inch of its course by the rudder; it is then taken up by the 
basket and the heads of the figures, and leads accurately to the 
tower angle. The gunwales of both the boats begin the next 
two curves, which meet in the same point; and all are cen- 
tralised by the long reflection which continues the vertical lines. 

Subordinated to this first system.of curves there is another, 


382 THE RLEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


begun by the small crossing bar of wood inserted in the angle 
behind the rudder ; continued by the bottom of the bank on 
which the figure sits, interrupted forcibly beyond it,* but 
taken up again by the water-line leading to the bridge foot, 
and passing on in delicate shadows under the arches, not 
easily shown in so rude a diagram, towards the other ex- 
tremity of the bridge. This is a most important curve, in- 
dicating that the force and sweep of the river have indeed 
been in old times under the large arches ; while the antiquity 
of the bridge is told us by the long tongue of land, either of 
carted rubbish, or washed down by some minor stream, which 
has interrupted this curve, and is now uscd as a landing-place 
for the boats, and for embarkation of merchandise, of which 
some bales and bundles are laid in a heap, immediately 
beneath the great tower. A common composer would have 
put these bales to one side or the other, but Turner knows 
better ; he uses them as a foundation for his tower, adding to 
its importance precisely as the sculptured base adorns a pil- 
lar ; and he farther increases the aspect of its height by throw- 
ing the reflection of it far down in the nearer water. All the 
great composers have this same feeling about sustaining their 
vertical masses: you will constantly find Prout using the 
artifice most dexterously (see, for instance, the figure with the 
wheelbarrow under the great tower, in the sketch of St. 
Nicolas, at Prague, and the white group of figures under the 
tower in the sketch of Augsburg +) ; and Veronese, Titian, and 
Tintoret continually put their principal figures at bases of 
pillars. Turner found out their secret very early, the most 
prominent instance of his composition on this principle being 
the drawing of Turin from the Superga, in Hakewell’s Italy. 


* In the smaller figure (32.), it will be seen that this interruption is 
caused by a cart coming down to the water's edge; and this object is 
serviceable as beginning another system of curves leading out of the 
picture on the right, but so obscurely drawn as not to be easily repre- 
sented in outline. As it is unnecessary to the explanation of our point 
here, it has been omitted in the larger diagram, the direction of the 
eurve it begins being indicated by the dashes only. 

t Both in the Sketches in Flanders and Germany. 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 383 


I chose Fig. 20., already given to illustrate foliage drawing, 
chiefly because, being another instance of precisely the same 
arrangement, it will serve to convince you of its being inten- 
tional, There, the vertical, formed by the larger tree, is con- 
tinued by the figure of the farmer, and that of one of the 
smaller trees by his stick. The lines of the interior mass of 
the bushes radiate, under the law of radiation, from a point 
behind the farmer's head ; but their outline curves are carried 
on and repeated, under the law of continuity, by the curves of 
the dog and boy—by the way, note the remarkable instance 
in these of the use of darkest lines towards the light ;—all 
more or less guiding the eye up to the right, in order to bring 
it finally to the Keep of Windsor, which is the central object 
of the picture, as the bridge tower is in the Cobientz. The 
wall on which the boy climbs answers the purpose of contrast- 
ing, both in direction and character, with these greater 
curves ; thus corresponding as nearly as possible to the minor 
tongue of land in the Coblentz. This, however, introduces us 
to another law, which we must consider separately. 


6. THE LAW OF CONTRAST. 


Of course the character of everything is best manifested by 
Contrast. Rest can only be enjoyed after labour ; sound, to 
be heard clearly, must rise out of silence ; light is exhibited 
by darkness, darkness by light ; and so on in all things. Now 
in art every colour has an opponent colour, which, if brought 
near it, will relieve it more completely than any other; so, 
also, every form and line may be made more striking to the 
eye by an opponent form or line near them ; a curved line is 
set off by a straight one, a massy form by a slight one, and so 
ou; and in all good work nearly double the value, which any 
given colour or form would have uncombined, is given to each 
by contrast.* 


* If you happen to meet with the plate of Durer’s representing a coat 
of arms with a skull in the shield, note the value given to the concave 
curves and sharp point of the helmet by the convex leafage carried 
round it in front; and the use of the blank white part of the shield in 
opposing the rich folds of the dress. 


384 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


In this case again, however, a too manifest use of the arti- 
fice yulgarises a picture. Great painters do not commonly, 
or very visibly, admit violent contrast. They introduce it by 
stealth and with intermediate links of tender change ; allow- 
ing, indeed, the opposition to tell upon the mind as a surprise, 
but not as a shock.* 

Thus in the rock of Ehrenbreitstein, Fig. 35., the main cur~ 
rent of the lines being downwards, in a convex swell, they are 
suddenly stopped at the lowest tower by a counter series of 
beds, directed nearly straight across them. This adverse force 
sets off and relieves the great curvature, but it is reconciled to 
it by a series of radiating lines below, which at first sympa- 
thize with the oblique bar, then gradually get steeper, till they 
meet and join in the fall of the great curve. No passage, 
however intentionally monotonous, is ever introduced by a 
good artist without some slight counter current of this kind ; 
so much, indeed, do the great composers feel the necessity of 
it, that they will even do things purposely ill or unsatisfact- 
orily, in order to give greater value to their well-doing in other 
places. In a skilful poet’s versification the so-called bad or 
inferior lines are not inferior because he could not do them 
better, but because he feels that if all were equally weighty, 
there would be no real sense of weight anywhere ; if all were 
equally melodious, the melody itself would be fatiguing ; and 
he purposely introduces the labouring or discordant verse, 
that the full ring may be felt in his main sentence, and the 
finished sweetness in his chosen rhythm.+ And continually in 
painting, inferior artists destroy their work by giving too much 


* Turner hardly ever, as far as I remember, allows a strong light to 
oppose a full dark, without some intervening tint. His suns never set 
behind dark mountains without a film of cloud above the mountain’s 
edge. 

+ ‘‘A prudent chief not always must display 
His powers in equal ranks and fair array, 
But with the occasion and the place comply, 
Conceal his force; nay, seem sometimes to fly. 
Those oft are stratagems which errors seem, 
Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream.” 
Essay on Criticism. 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 385 


of all that they think is good, while the great painter gives 
just enough to be enjoyed, and passes to an opposite kind of 
enjoyment, or to an inferior siate of enjoyment: he gives a 
passage of rich, involved, exquisitely wrought colour, then 
passes away into slight, and pale and simple colour ; he paints 
for a minute or two with intense decision, then suddenly be- 
comes, as the spectator thinks, slovenly; but he is not slovenly: 
you could not have taken any more decision from him just 
then ; you have had as much as is good for you; he paints 
over a great space of his picture forms of the most rounded 
and melting tenderness, and suddenly, as you think by a freak, 





Fia. 48. 


gives you a bit as jagged and sharp as a leafless blackthorn. 
Perhaps the most exquisite piece of subtle contrast in the world 
of painting is the arrow point, laid sharp against the white 
side and among the flowing hair of Correggio’s Antiope. It is 
quite singular how very little contrast will sometimes serve to 
make an entire group of forms interesting which would other- 
wise have been valueless. There is a good deal of picturesque 
material, for instance, in this top of an old tower, Fig. 48., 
tiles and stones and sloping roof not disagreeably mingled ; 
but all would have been unsatisfactory if there had not hap- 
pened to be that iron ring on the inner wall, which by its 


386 THE HLEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


vigorous black circular line precisely opposes all the square 
and angular characters of the battlements and roof. Draw 
the tower without the ring, and see what a difference it will 
make. 

One of the most importent applications of the law of con- 
trast is in association with the law of continuity, causing an 
unexpected but gentle break in a continuous series. This 
artifice is perpetual in music, and perpetual also in good illu- 
mination ; the way in which little surprises of change are pre- 
pared in any current borders, or chains of ornamental design, 
being one of the most subtle characteristics of the work of 
the good periods. We take, for instance, a bar of ornament 
between two written columns of an early 14th century MS., 
and at the first glance we suppose it to be quite monotonous 
all the way up, composed of a winding tendril, with alter- 
nately a blue leaf and a scarlet bud, Presently, however, we 
see that, in order to observe the law of principality there is 
one large scarlet leaf instead of a bud, nearly half-way up, which 
forms a centre to the whole rod; and when we begin to ex- 
amine the order of the leaves, we find it varied carefully. Let 
a stand for scarlet bud, b for blue leaf, e for two blue leaves 
on one stalk, s for a stalk without a leaf, and r for the large 
red leaf. Then counting from the ground, the order begins 
as follows: 

b, b, a; b, s, b, A; 6, b, A; b, b, A; and we think we shall have 
two b’s and an a all the way, when suddenly it becomes 3B, a; 
b, Rr; b, a; b, a; 6, 4; and we think we are going to have 8, a 
continued ; but no: here it becomes 0, s ; b, s; b, A; b, s; b, s; 
c, s; b, s; b, s; and we think we are surely going to have b, s 
continued, but behold it runs away to the end with a quick b, 6, 
A; b, b, b, b!* Very often, however, the designer is satisfied 
with one surprise, but I never saw a good illuminated border 
without one at least ; and no series of any kind is ever intro- 
duced by & great composer in a painting without a snap some- 
where. ‘There is a pretty one in Turner's drawing of Rome, 
with the large balustrade for a foreground in the Hakewell’s 


“Iam describing from a MS, -?reu 1300, of Gregory’s *‘ Decretalia” 
in my Own possession. 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 387 


Italy series: the single baluster struck out of the line, and 
showing the street below through the gap, simply makes the 
whole composition right, when otherwise, it would have been 
stiff and absurd. 

If you look back to Fig. 48. you will see, in the arrange- 
ment of the battlements, a simple instance of the use of such 
variation. The whole top of the tower, though actually three 
sides of a square, strikes the eye as a continuous series of five 
masses. The first two, on the left, somewhat square and 
blank ; then the next two higher and richer, the tiles being 
seen on their slopes. Both these groups being couples, there 
is enough monotony in the series to make a change pleasant ; 
and the last battlement, therefore, is a little higher than the 
first two,—a little lower than the second two,—and different 
in shape from either. Hide it with your finger, and see how 
ugly and formal the other four battlements look. 

There ave in this figure several other simple illustrations of 
the laws we have been tracing. Thus the whole shape of the 
wall’s mass being square, it is well, still for the sake of con- 
trast, to oppose it not only by the element of curvature, in the 
ring, and lines of the roof below, but by that of sharpness ; 
hence the pleasure which the eye takes in the projecting point 
of the roof. Also because the walls are thick and sturdy, it is 
well to contrast their strength with weakness; therefore we 
enjoy the evident decrepitude of this roof as it sinks between 
them. The whole mass being nearly white, we want a con- 
trasting shadow somewhere ; and get it, under our piece of 
decrepitude. This shade, with the tiles of the wall below, 
forms enother pointed mass, necessary to the first by the law 
of repetition. Hide this inferior angle with your finger, and 
see how ugly the other looks. A sense of the law of sym- 
metry, though you might hardly suppose it, has some share in 
the feeling with which you look at the battlements ; there is 
a certain pleasure in the opposed slopes of their top, on one 
side down to the left, on the other to the right. Still less 
would you think the law of radiation had anything to do with 
the matter: but if you take the extreme point of the black 
shadow on the left for a centre and follow first the low curve 


388 THE ELEMENTS .OF DRAWING. 


of the eaves of the wall, it will lead you, if you continue it, te 
the point of the tower cornice ; follow the second curve, the 
top of the tiles of the wall, and it will strike the top of the 
right-hand battlement ; then draw a curve from the highest 
point of the angle battlement on the left, through the points 
of the roof and its dark echo ; and you will see how the whole 
top of the tower radiates from this lowest dark point. There 
are other curvatures crossing these main ones, to keep them 
from being too conspicuous. Follow the curve of the upper 
roof, it will take you to the top of the highest battlement ; and 
the stones indicated at the right-hand side of the tower are 
more extended at the bottom, in order to get some less direct 
expression of sympathy, such as irregular stones may be cap- 
able of, with the general flow of the curves from left to right. 

You may not readily believe, at first, that all these laws are 
indeed involved in so trifling a piece of composition. But as 
you study longer, you will discover that these laws, and many 
more, are obeyed by the powerful composers in every touch: 
that literally, there is never a dash of their pencil which is 
not carrying out appointed purposes of this kind in twenty 
various ways at once ; and that there is as much difference, in 
way of intention and authority, between one of the great com- 
posers ruling his colours, and a common painter confused by 
them, as there is between a general directing the march of an 
army, and an old lady carried off her feet by a mob. 


7. THE LAW OF INTERCHANGE. ‘ 


Closely connected with the law of contrast is a law which 
enforces the unity of opposite things, by giving to each a 
portion of the character of the other. If, for instance, you 
divide a shield into two masses of colour, all the way down— 
suppose blue and white, and put a bar, or figure of an animal, 
partly on. one division, partly on the other, you will find it 
pleasant to the eye if you make the part of the animal blue 
which comes upon the white half, and white which comes 
upon the blue half. This is done in heraldry, partly for the 
sake of perfect intelligibility, but yet more for the sake of de- 
light in interchange of colour, since, in all ornamentation 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 389 


whatever, the practice is continual, in the ages of good de- 
sign. 

Sometimes this alternation is merely a reversal of contrasts ; 
as that, after red has been for some time on one side, and 
biue on the other, red shall pass to blue’s side and blue to 
red’s. This kind of alternation takes place simply in four- 
quartered shields ; in more subtle pieces of treatment, a little 
bit only of each colour is carried into the other, and they are 
as it were dovetailed together. Oneof the most curious facts 
which will impress itself upon you, when you have drawn some 
time carefully from Nature in light and shade, is the appear- 
ance of intentional artifice with which contrasts of this alter- 
nate kind are produced by her ; the artistry with which she 
will darken a tree trunk as long as it comes against light sky, 
and throw sunlight on it precisely at the spot where it comes 
against a dark hill, and similarly treat all her masses of shade 
and colour, is so great, that if you only follow her closely, 
every one who looks at your drawing with attention will 
think that you have been inventing the most artifically and 
unnaturally delightful interchanges of shadow that could pos- 
sibly be devised by human wit. 

You will find this law of interchange insisted upon at length 
by Prout in his ‘“‘ Lessons on Light and Shade:” it seems, of 
all his principles of composition, to be the one he is most con- 
scious of ; many others he obeys by instinct, but this he for- 
mally accepts and forcibly declares. 

The typical purpose of the law of interchange is, of course, 
to teach us how opposite natures may be helped and strength- 
ened by receiving each, as far as they can, some impress or 
imparted power, from the other. 


8. THE LAW OF CONSISTENCY. 


Itis to be remembered, in the next place, that while con- 
trast exhibits the characters of things, it very often neutralises 
or paralyses their power. A number of white things may be 
shown to be clearly white by opposition of a black thing, but 
if you want the full power of their gathered light, the black 
thing may be seriously in our way. Thus, while contrast 


3990 THE HLEMEN?YS OF DRAWING. 


displays things, it is unity and sympathy which employ them, 
concentrating the power of several into a mass. And, not in 
art merely, but in all the affairs of life, the wisdom of man is 
continually called upon to reconcile tiiese opposite methods of 
exhibiting, or using, the materials in his power. By change 
he gives them pleasantness, and by consistency value; by 
change he is refreshed, and by perseverence strengthened. 

Hence many compositions address themselves to the specta- 
tor by aggregate force of colour or line, more than by contrasts 
of either; many noble pictures are painted almost exclu- 
sively in various tones of red, or grey, or gold, so as to be in- 
stantly striking by their breadth of flush, or glow, or tender 
coldness, these qualities being exhibited only by slight and 
subtle use of contrast. Similarly as to form ; some composi- 
. tions associate massive and rugged forms, others slight and 
graceful ones, each with few interruptions by lines of con, 
trary character. And, in general, such compositions possess 
higher sublimity than those which are more mingled in their 
elements. They tell a special tale, and summon a definite 
state of feeling, while the grand compositions merely please 
the eye. 

This unity or breadth of character generally attaches most 
to the works of the greatest men; their separate pictures 
have all separate aims. We have not, in each, grey colour set 
against sombre, and sharp forms against soft, and loud passages 
against low; but we have the bright picture, with its delicate 
sadness ; the sombre picture, with its single ray of relief; the 
stern picture, with only one tender group of lines; the soft 
and calm picture, with only one rock angle at its flank; and 
soon. Hence the variety of their work, as well as its im- 
pressiveness. ‘The principal bearing of this law, however, is 
on the separate masses or divisions of a picture: the charac- 
ter of the whole composition may be broken or various, if we 
please, but there must certainly be a tendency to consistent 
assemblage in its divisions. As an army may act on several 
points at once, but can only act effectually by having some- 
where formed and regular masses, and not wholly by skir- 
mishers ; so a picture may be various in its tendencies, but 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 391 


must be somewhere united and coherent in its masses. Good 
composers are always associating their colours in great 
eroups ; binding their forms together by encompassing lines, 
and securing, by various dexterities of expedient, what they 
themselves call “ breadth:” that is to say, a large gathering 
of each kind of thing into one place; light being gathered to 
light, darkness to darkness, and colour to colour. If, how- 
ever, this be done by introducing false lights or false col- 
ours, it is absurd and monstrous; the skill of a painter con- 
sists in obtaining breadth by rational arrangement of his 
objects, not by forced or wanton treatment of them. It is an 
easy matter to paint one thing all white, and another all black 
or brown; but not an easy matter to assemble all the circum- 
stances which will naturally produce white in one place, and 
brown in another. Generally speaking, however, breadth will 
result in sufficient degree from fidelity of study: Nature is 
always broad ; and if you paint her colours in true relations, 
you will paint them in majestic masses. If you find your 
work look broken and scattered, it is, in all probability, not 
only ill composed, but untrue. 

The opposite quality to breadth, that of division or scatter- 
ing of light and colour, has a certain contrasting charm, and 
is occasionally introduced with exquisite effect by good com- 
posers.* Still, it is never the mere scattering, but the 
order discernible through this scattering, which is the real 
source of pleasure; not the mere multitude, but the con- 
stellation of multitude. The broken lights in the work of a 
good painter wander like flocks upon the hills, not unshep- 
herded ; speaking of life and peace: the broken lights of a 
bad painter fall like hailstones, and are capable only of mis- 
chief, leaving it to be wished they were also of dissolution. 


* One of the most wonderful compositions of Tintoret in Venice, is 
little more than a field of subdued crimson, spotted with flakes of scat- 
tered gold. The upper clouds in the most beautiful skies owe great part 
of their power to infinitude of division; order being marked through 
this division. 


392 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


9, THE LAW OF HARMONY. 


This last law is not, strictly speaking, so much one of com- 
position as of truth, but it must guide composition, and is 
properly, therefore, to be stated in this place. 

Good drawing is, as we have seen, an abstract of natural 
facts ; you cannot represent all that you would, but must 
continually be falling short, whether you will or no, of the 
force, or quantity, of Nature. Now, suppose that your means 
and time do not admit of your giving the depth of colour in 
the scene, and that you are obliged to paint it paler, If you 
paint all the colours proportionately paler, as if an equal 
quantity of tint had been washed away from each of them, 
you still obtain a harmonious, though not an equally forcible 
statement of natural fact. But if you take away the colours 
unequally, and leave some tints nearly as deep as they are in 
Nature, while others are much subdued, you have no longer 
a true statement. You cannot say to the observer, “ Fancy 
all those colours a little deeper, and you will have the actual 
fact.” However he adds in imagination, or takes away, some- 
thing is sure to be still wrong. The picture is out of har- 
mony. 

It will happen, however, much more frequently, that you 
have to darken the whole system of colours, than to make 
them paler. You remember, in your first studies of colour 
from Nature, you were to leave the passages of light which 
were too bright to be imitated, as white paper. But, in com- 
pleting the picture, it becomes necessary to put colour into 
them ; and then the other colours must be made darker, in 
some fixed relation to them. If you deepen all proportion- 
ately, though the whole scene is darker than reality, it is only 
as if you were looking at the reality in a lower light: but il, 
while you darken some of the tints, you leave others undark- 
ened, the picture is out of harmony, and will not give the im- 
pression of truth. 

It is not, indeed, possible to deepen all the colours so much 
as to relieve the lights in their natural degree; you would 
merely sink most of your colours, if you tried to do so, into a 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 393 


broad mass of blackness: but it is quite possible to lower 
them harmoniously, and yet more in some parts of the pict- 
ure than in others, so as to allow you to show the light you 
want in a visible relief. In well-harmonised pictures this is 
done by gradually deepening the tone of the picture towards 
the lighter parts of it, without materially lowering it in the 
very dark parts; the tendency in such pictures being, of 
course, to include large masses of middle tints. But the 
principal point to be observed in doing this, is to deepen 
the individual tints without dirtying or obscuring them. It 
is easy to lower the tone of the picture by washing it over 
with grey or brown ; and easy to see the effect of the land- 
scape, when its colours are thus universally polluted with 
black, by using the black convex mirror, one of the most 
pestilent inventions for falsifying nature and degrading art 
which ever was put into an artist’s hand.* For the thing re- 
quired is not to darken pale yellow by mixing grey with it, 
but to deepen the pure yellow; not to darken crimson by 
mixing black with it, but by making it deeper and richer crim- 
son: and thus the required effect could only be seen in Nat- 
ure, if you had pieces of glass of the colour of every object 
in your landscape, and of every minor hue that made up those 
colours, and then could see the real landscape through this 
deep gorgeousness of the varied glass. You cannot do this 
with glass, but you can do it for yourself as you work ; that 
is to say, you can put deep blue for pale blue, deep gold for 
pale gold, and so on, in the proportion you need; and then 
you may paint as forcibly as you choose, but your work will 
still be in the manner of Titian, not of Caravaggio or Spagno- 
letto, or any other of the black slaves of painting.+ 

*T fully believe that the strange grey gloom, accompanied by consid- 
erable power of effect, which prevails in modern French art must be 
owing to the use of this mischievous instrument ; the French landscape 
always gives me the idea of Nature seen carelessly in the dark mirror, 
and painted coarsely, but scientifically, through the veil of its perver- 
8100. 

, Various other parts of this subject are entered into, especially in 
their bearing on the ideal of painting, in ‘‘ Modern Painters,” vol. iv, 
chap. iii. 


394 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


Supposing those scales of colour, which I told you to pre. 
pare in order to show you the relations of colour to grey, were 
quite accurately made, and numerous enough, you would have 
nothing more to do, in order to obtain a deeper tone in any 
given mass of colour, than to substitute for each of its hues 
the hue as many degrees deeper in the scale as you wanted, 
that is to say, if you want to deepen the whole two degrees, 
substituting for the yellow No. 5. the yellow No. 7., and for 
the red No. 9. the red No. 11., and so on; but the hues of 
any object in Nature are far too numerous, and their degrees 
too subtle, to admit of so mechanical a process. Still, you 
may see the principle of the whole matter clearly by taking a 
group of colours out of your scale, arranging them prettily, 
and then washing them all over with grey: that represents 
the treatment of Nature by the black mirror. Then arrange 
the same group of colours, with the tints five or six degrees 
deeper in the scale ; and that will represent the treatment of 
Nature by Titian. 

You can only, however, feel your way fully to the right of 
the thing by working from Nature. 

The best subject on which to begin a piece of study of this 
kind is a good thick tree trunk, seen against blue sky with 
some white clouds in it. Paint the clouds in true and ten- 
derly gradated white; then give the sky a bold full blue, 
bringing them well out; then paint the trunk and leaves 
erandly dark against all, but in such glowing dark green and 
brown as you see they will bear. Afterwards proceed to 
more complicated studies, matching the colours carefully first 
by your old method ;- then deepening each colour with its own 
tint, and being careful, above all things, to keep truth of equal 
change when the colours are connected with each other, as in 
dark and light sides of the same object. Much more aspect 
and sense of harmony are gained by the precision with which 
you observe the relation of colours in dark sides and light 
sides, and the influence of modifying reflections, than by mere 
accuracy of added depth in independent colours. 

This harmony of tone, as it is generally called, is the most 
important of those which the artist has to regard. But there 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 395 


are all kinds of harmonies in a picture, according to its mode 
of production. There is even a harmony of touch. If you 
paint one part of it very rapidly and forcibly, and another part 
slowly and delicately, each division of the picture may be right 
separately, but they will not agree together: the whole will be 
effectless and valueless, out of harmony. Similarly, if you paint 
one part of it by a yellow light in a warm day, and another by a 
grey light in a cold day, though both may have been sunlight, 
and both may be well toned, and have their relative shadows 
truly cast, neither will look ike lheght: they will destroy each 
other’s power, by being out of harmony. These are only broad 
and definable instances of discordance ; but there is an extent 
of harmony in all good work much too subtle for definition ; 
depending on the draughtsman’s carrying everything he draws 
up to just the balancing and harmonious point, in finish, and 
colour, and depth of tone, and intensity of moral feeling, and 
style of touch, all considered at once ; and never allowing him- 
self to lean too emphatically on detached parts, or exalt one 
thing at the expense of another, or feel acutely in one place 
and coldly in another. If you have got some of Cruikshank’s 
etchings, you will be able, I think, to feel the nature of harmo- 
nious treatment in a simple kind, by comparing them with any 
of Richter’s illustrations to the numerous German story-books 
lately published at Christmas, with all the German stories 
spoiled. Cruikshank’s work is often incomplete in character 
and poor in incident, but, as drawing, it is perfect in harmony. 
The pure and simple effects of daylight which he gets by his 
thorough mastery of treatment in this respect, are quite unri- 
valled, as far as I know, by any other work executed with so 
few touches. His vignettes to Grimm’s German stories, 
already recommended, are the most remarkable in this quality. 
Richter’s illustrations, on the contrary, are of a very high 
stamp as respects understanding of human character, with in- 
finite playfulness and tenderness of fancy ; but, as drawings, 
they are almost unendurably out of harmony, violent blacks in 
one place being continually opposed to trenchant white in 
another; and, as is almost sure to be the case with bad _ har- 
monists, the local colour hardly felt anywhere. All German 


396 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


work is apt to be out of harmony, in consequence of its too fre 
quent conditions of affectation, and its wilful refusals of fact ; 
as well as by reason of a feverish kind of excitement, which 
dwells violently on particular points, and makes all the lines of 
thought in the picture to stand on end, as it were, like a cat’s 
fur electrified ; while good work is always as quiet as a couchant 
leopard, and as strong. 

I have now stated to you all the laws of composition which 
occur to me as capable of being illustrated or defined; but 
there are multitudes of others which, in the present state of 
my knowledge, I cannot define, and others which I never 
hope to define ; and these the most important, and connected 
with the deepest powers of the art. Among those which I 
hope to be able to explain when I have thought of them more, 
are the laws which relate to nobleness and ignobleness ; that 
ignobleness especially which we commonly call ‘ vulgarity,” 
and which, in its essence, is one of the most curious subjects 
of inquiry connected with human feeling. Among those 
which I never hope to explain, are chiefly laws of expression, 
and others bearing simply on simple matters ; but, for that 
very reason, more influential than any others. ‘These are, 
from the first, as inexplicable as our bodily sensations are; it 
being just as impossible, I think, to explain why one succes- 
sion of musical notes* shall be noble and pathetic, and such 
as might have been sung by Casella to Dante, and why an- 
other succession is base and ridiculous, and would be fit only 
for the reasonably good ear of Bottom, as to explain why we 
like sweetness, and dislike bitterness. The best part of ever; 
great work is always inexplicable: it is good because it is 
good ; and innocently gracious, opening as the green of the 
2zarth, or falling as the dew of heaven. 

But though you cannot explain them, you may always render 


*In all the best arrangements of colour, the delight occasioned by 
their mode of succession is entirely inexplicable, nor can it be reasoned 
about ; we like it just as we like an air in music, but cannot reason any 
refractory person into liking it, if they do not: and yet there is dis- 
tinctly a right and a wrong in it, and a shite taste and bad taste reper 
ing it, as also in music. 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 397 


yourself more and more sensitive to these higher qualities by 
the discipline which you generally give to your character, and 
this especially with regard to the choice of incidents; a kind 
of composition in some sort easier than the artistical arrange- 
ments of lines and colours, but in every sort nobler, because 
addressed to deeper feelings. 

For instance, in the “‘ Datur Hora Quieti,” the last vignette 
to Roger’s Poems, the plough in the foreground has three pur- 
poses. The first purpose is to meet the stream of sunlight on 
the river, and make it brighter by opposition ; but any dark 
object. whatever would have done this. Its second purpose is 
by its two arms, to repeat the cadence of the group of the two 
ships, and thus give a greater expression of repose ; but two 
sitting figures would have done this. Its third and chief, or 
pathetic, purpose is, as it lies abandoned in the furrow (the 
vessels also being moored, and having their sails down), to be 
a type of human, labour closed with the close of day. The 
parts of it on which the hand leans are brought most clearly 
into sight ; and they are the chief dark of the picture, because 
the tillage of the ground is required of man as a punishment ; 
but they make the soft light of the setting sun brighter, be- 
cause rest is sweetest after toil. These thoughts may never 
occur to us as we glance carelessly at the design; and yet 
their under current assuredly affects the feelings, and increases, 
as the painter meant it should, the impression of melancholy, 
and of peace. 

Again, in the “‘ Lancaster Sands,” which is one of the plates 
I have marked as most desirable for your possession ; the ~ 
stream of light which falls from the setting sun on the ad- 
vancing tide stands similarly in need of some force of near 
object to relieve its brightness. But the incident which Tur 
ner has here adopted is the swoop of an angry seagull at a dog, 
who yelps at it, drawing back as the wave rises over his feet, 
and the bird shrieks within a foot of his face. Its unexpected 
boldness is a type of the anger of its ocean element, and warns 
us of the sea’s advance just as surely as the abandoned apse 
told us of the ceased labour of the day. 

It is not, however, so much in the. selection of single in 


398 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


cidents of this kind as in the feeling which regulates the ar 
rangement of the whole subject that the mind of a great com- 
poser is known. A single incident may be suggested by a 
felicitous chance, as a pretty motto might be for the heading 
of achapter. But the great composers so arrange all their 
designs that one incident illustrates another, just as one colour 
relieves another. Perhaps the ‘‘ Heysham,” of the Yorkshire 
series which, as to its locality, may be considered a companion 
to the last drawing we have spoken of, the “ Lancaster Sands,” 
presents as interesting an example as we could find of Turner’s 
feeling in this respect. The subject is a simple north-country 
village, on the shore of Morecambe Bay ; not in the common 
sense, a picturesque village: there are no pretty bow-windows, 
or red roofs, or rocky steps of entrance to the rustic doors, 
or quaint gables ; nothing but a single street of thatched and 
chiefly clay-built cottages, ranged in a somewhat monotonous 
line, the roofs so green with moss that at first we hardly dis- 
cern the houses from the fields and trees. The village street 
is closed at the end by a wooden gate, indicating the little 
traffic there is on the road through it, and giving it something 
the look of a large farmstead, in which a right of way lies 
through the yard. The road which leads to this gate is full 
of ruts, and winds down a bad bit of hill between two broken 
banks of moor ground, succeeding immediately to the few 
enclosures which surround the village; they can hardly be 
called gardens; but a decayed fragment or two of fencing 
fill the gaps in the bank; and a clothes-line, with some 
clothes on it, striped blue and red, and a smock-frock, is 
stretched between the trunks of some stunted willows; a very 
small haystack and pigstye being seen at the back of the cot- 
tage beyond. An empty, two-wheeled, lumbering cart, drawn 
by a pair of horses with huge wooden collars, the driver sitting 
lazily in the sun, sideways on the leader, is going slowly home 
along the rough road, it being about country dinner-time. 
At the end of the village there is a better house, with three 
chimneys and a dormer window in its roof, and the roof is of 
stone shingle instead of thatch, but very rough. This house 
is no doubt the clergyman’s ; there is some smoke from one 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 399 


of its chimneys, none from any other in the village; this 
smoke is from the lowest chimney at the back, evidently that 
of the kitchen, and it is rather thick, the fire not having been 
long lighted. A few hundred yards from the clergyman’s 
house, nearer the shore, is the church, discernible from the 
cottage only by its low-arched belfry, a little neater than one 
would expect in such a village ; perhaps lately built by the 
Puseyite incumbent ;* and beyond the church, close to the 
sea, are two fragments of a border war-tower, standing on 
their circular mound, worn on its brow deep into edges and 
furrows by the feet of the village children. On the bank of 
moor, which forms the foreground, are a few cows, the carter’s 
dog barking at a vixenish one: the milkmaid is feeding an- 
other, a gentle white one, which turns its head to her, expect- 
ant of a handful of fresh hay, which she has brought for it in 
her blue apron, fastened up round her waist ; she stands with 
her pail on her head, evidently the village coquette, for she 
has a neat bodice, and pretty striped petticoat under the blue 
apron, and red stockings. Nearer us, the cowherd, barefooted, 
stands on a piece of the limestone rock (for the ground is 
thistly and not pleasurable to bare feet) ;—whether boy or 
girl we are not sure; it may be a boy, with a girl’s worn-out 
bonnet on, or a girl with a pair of ragged trowsers on; prob- 
ably the first, as the old bonnet is evidently useful to keep the 
sun out of our eyes when we are looking for strayed cows 
among the moorland hollows, and helps us at present to watch 
(holding the bonnet’s edge down) the quarrel of the vixenish 
cow with the dog, which, leaning on our long stick, we allow 
to proceed without any interference. A little to the right the 
hay is being got in, of which the milkmaid has just taken her 
aprontful to the white cow ; but the hay is very thin, and can- 
not well be raked up because of the rocks ; we must glean it 


* « Puseyism ’ was unknown in the days when this drawing was made ; 
but the kindly and helpful influences of what may be call ecclesiastical 
sentiment, which, in a morbidly exaggerated condition, forms one of the 
principal elements of ‘* Puseyisin,’ —I use this word regretfully, no other 
existing which will serve for it,—had been known and felt in our wild 
northern districts long before. 


400 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 


like corn, hence the smallness of our stack behind the willows; 
and a woman is pressing a bundle of it hard together, kneel- 
ing against the rock’s edge, to carry it safely to the hay-cart 
without dropping any. Beyond the village is a rocky hill, 
deep set with brushwood, a square crag or two of limestone 
emerging here and there, with pleasant turf on their brows, 
heaved in russet and mossy mounds against the sky, which, 
clear and calm, and as golden as the moss, stretches down be- 
hind it towards the sea. A single cottage just shows its roof 
over the edge of the hill, looking seaward ; perhaps one of the 
village shepherds is a sea captain now, and may have built it 
there, that his mother may first see the sails of his ship when- 
ever it runs into the bay. Then under the hill, and beyond 
the border tower, is the blue sea itself, the waves flowing in 
over the sand in long curved lines, slowly ; shadows of cloud 
and gleams of shallow water on white sand alternating—miles 
away ; but no sail is visible, not one fisherboat on the beach, 
not one dark speck on the quiet horizon. Beyond all are the 
Cumberland mountains, clear in the sun, with ee light on 
all their crags. 

I should tut the reader cannot but feel the kind of har- 
mony there is in this composition ; the entire purpose of the 
painter to give us the impression of wild, yet gentle, country 
life, monotonous as the succession of the noiseless waves, pa- 
tient and enduring as the rocks; but peaceful, and full of 
health and quiet hope, and sanctified by the pure mountain 
air and baptismal dew of heaven, falling softly between days 
of toil and nights of innocence. 

All noble composition of this kind can be reached only by 
instinct: you cannot set yourself to arrange such a subject ; 
you may see it, and seize it, at all times, but never laboriously 
invent it. And your power of discerning what is best in ex 
pression, among natural subjects, depends wholly on the tem- 
per in which you keep your own mind; above all, on your 
living so much alone as to allow it to become acutely sensitive 
in its own stillness. The noisy life of modern days is wholly 
incompatible with any true perception of natural beauty. If 
you go down into Cumberland by the railroad, live in some 


ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 401 


frequented hotel, and explore the hills with merry companions, 
however much you may enjoy your tour or their conversation, 
depend upon it you will never choose so much as one pictorial 
subject rightly ; you will not see into the depth of any. But 
take knapsack and stick, walk towards the hills by short day's 
journeys—ten or twelve miles a day—taking a week from some 
starting-place sixty or seventy miles away: sleep at the pretty 
little wayside inns, or the rough village ones; then take the 
hills as they tempt you, following glen or shore as your eye 
elances or your heart guides, wholly scornful of local fame or 
fashion, and of everything which it is the ordinary traveller’s 
duty to see or pride to do. Never force yourself to admire 
anything when you are not in the humour; but never force 
yourself away from what you feel to be lovely, in search of 
anything better : and gradually the deeper scenes of the natural 
world will unfold themselves to you in still increasing fulness 
of passionate power ; and your difficulty will be no more to 
seek or to compose subjects, but only to choose one from 
among the multitude of melodious thoughts with which you 
will be haunted, thoughts which will of course be noble or 
original in proportion to your own depth of character and 
general power of mind: for it is not so much by the consid- 
eration you give to any single drawing, as by the previous 
discipline of your powers of thought, that the character 
of your composition will be determined. Simplicity of life 
will make you sensitive to the refinement and modesty of 
scenery, just as inordinate excitement and pomp of daily life 
will make you enjoy coarse colours and affected forms. Habits 
of patient comparison and accurate judgment will make your 
art precious, as they will make your actions wise ; and every 
increase of noble enthusiasm in your living spirit will be 
measured by the reflection of its light upon the works of 
your hands. 
Faithfully yours, 
J. Rusk. 


oa Lar tae 
orate e a 
al ie on neh nen ae 

APS AES < lt en 


6g DEO eo 





- 





a> i =% f = a nn d - e. ™, *S ue — \ +. od . en > me 
ithe ; y A > + * nig she ~1 Bac o- . a Va 2 conte re ie. te remit * ya 





APPENDIX. 


THINGS TO BE STUDIED. 


TuE worst danger by far, to which a solitary student is ex~ 
posed, is that of liking things that he should not. It is not 
so much his difficulties, as his tastes, which he must set him- 
self to conquer ; and although, under the guidance of a master, 
many works of art may be made instructive, which are only 
of partial excellence (the good and bad of them being duly 
distinguished), his safeguard, as long as he studies alone, will 
be in allowing himself to possess only things, in their way, so 
free from faults, that nothing he copies in them can seriously 
mislead him, and to contemplate only those works of art which 
he knows to be either perfect or noble in their errors. I will 
therefore set down in clear order, the names of the masters 
whom you may safely admire, and a few of the books which 
you may safely possess. In these days of cheap illustration, 
the danger is always rather of your possessing too much than 
tou little. It may admit of some question, how far the look- 
ing at bad art may set off and illustrate the characters of the 
good ; but, on the whole, I believe it is best to live always on 
quite wholesome food, and that our taste of it will not be made 
more acute by feeding, however temporarily, on ashes. Of 
course the works of the great masters can only be serviceable 
to the student after he has made considerable progress him- 
self. It only wastes the time and dulls the feelings of young 
persons, to drag them through picture galleries ; at least, unless 
they themselves wish to look at particular pictures. Generally, 
young people only care to enter a picture gallery when there 
is a chance of getting leave to run a race to the other end of 


404 APPENDIX. 


it; and they had better do that in the garden below. I, 
however, they have any real enjoyment of pictures, and want . 
to look at this one or that, the principal point is never to dis- 
turb them in looking at what interests them, and never to 
make them look at what does not. Nothing is of the least 
use to young people (nor, by the way, of ‘much use to old ones), 
but what interests them ; and therefore, though it is of great 
importance to put nothing but good art into their possession, 
yet when they are passing though great houses or galleries, 
they should be allowed to look precisely at what pleases them : 
if it is not useful to them as art, it will be in some other way : 
and the healthiest way in which art can interest them is when 
they look at it, not as art, but because it represents something 
they like in nature. Ifa boy has had his heart filled by the 
life of some great man, and goes up thirstily to a Vandyck 
portrait of him, to see what he was like, that is the whole- 
somest way in which he can begin the study of portraiture ; if he 
love mountains, and dwell on a Turner drawing because he sees 
in it a likeness to a Yorkshire scar, or an Alpine pass, that is 
the wholesomest way in which he can begin the study of land- 
scape ; and if a girl’s mind is filled with dreams of angels and 
saints, and she pauses before an Angelico because she thinks 
it must surely be indeed like heaven, that is the wholesomest 
way for her to begin the study of religious art. 

When, however, the student has made some definite prog- 
ress, and every picture becomes really a guide to him, false 
or true, in his own work, it is of great importance that he 
should never so much as look at bad art; and then, if the 
reader is willing to trust me in the matter, the following 
advice will be useful to him. In which, with his permission, 
I will quit the indirect and return to the epistolary address, 
as being the more convenient. 

First, in Galleries of Pictures : 

1, You may look, with trust in their being always right, at 
Titian, Veronese, Tintoret, Giorgione, John Bellini, and Velas- 
quez ; the authenticity of the picture being of course estab- 
lished for you by proper authority. 

2. You may look with admiration, admitting, however 


' 
THINGS TO BH STUDIED. 405 


question of right and wrong,* at Van Eyck, Holbein, Perugino, 
Francia, Angelico, Leonardo da Vinci, Correggio, Vandyck, 
Rembrandt, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Turner, and the modern 
Pre-Raphaelites.+- You had better look at no other painters 
than these, for you run a chance, otherwise, of being led far 
off the road, or into grievous faults, by some of the other 
great ones, as Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Rubens; and of 
being, besides, corrupted in taste by the base ones, as Murillo, 
Salvator, Claude, Gasper Poussin, Teniers, and such others. 
You may look, however, for examples of evil, with safe univer- 
sality of reprobation, being sure that everything you see is 
bad, at Domenichino, the Caracci, Bronzino, and the figure 
pieces of Salvator. 

Among those named for study under question, you cannot 
look too much at, nor grow too enthusiastically fond of, An- 
gelico, Corregeio, Reynolds, Turner, and the Pre-Raphaelites ; 
but, if you find yourself getting especiaily fond of any of the 
others, leave off looking at them, for you must be going wrong 
some way or other. If, for instance, you begin to lke Rem- 
brandt or Leonardo especially, you are losing your feeling for 
colour; if you like Van Eyck or Perugino especially, you 
must be getting too fond of rigid detail ; and if you like 
Vandyck or Gainsborough especially, you must be too much 
attracted by gentlemanly flimsiness. 

Secondly, of published, or otherwise multiplied, art, such 
as you may be able to get yourself, or to see at private houses 
or in shops, the works of the following masters are the most 
desirable, after the Turners, Rembrandts, and Durers, which 
I have asked you to get first : 


Papanmel Prout. * >’ 
All his published lithographic sketches are of the greatest 


* TI do not mean necessarily to imply inferiority of rank, in saying 
that this second class of painters have questionable qualities. The great- 
est men have often many faults, and sometimes their faults are a part 
of their greatness; but such men are not, of course, to be looked upon 
by the student with absolute implicitness of faith. 

+ Including under this term, John Lewis, and William Hunt of the 
Old Water-colour, who, take him all in all, is the best painter of still 
life, I believe, that ever existed. 


406 APPENDIX. 


value, wholly unrivalled in power of composition, and in love 
and feeling of architectural subject. His somewhat man- 
nered linear execution, though not to be imitated in your own 
sketches from Nature, may be occasionally copied, for disci- 
pline’s sake, with great advantage ; it will give you a peculiar 
steadiness of hand, not quickly attainable in any other way ; 
and there is no fear of your getting into any faultful manner- 
ism as long as you carry out the different modes of more 
delicate study above recommended. 

If you are interested in architecture, and wish to make it 
your chief study, you should draw much from photographs of 
it ; and then from the architecture itself, with the same com- 
pletion of detail and gradation, only keeping the shadows of 
due paleness, in photographs they are always about four times 
as dark as they ought to be; and treat buildings with as 
much care and love as artists do their rock foregrounds, draw- 
ing all the moss and weeds, and stains upon them. But if, 
without caring to understand architecture, you merely want 
the picturesque character of it, and to be able to sketch it 
fast, you cannot do better than take Prout for your exclusive 
master; only do not think that you are copying Prout by 
drawing straight lines with dots at the end of them. Get 
first his ‘“‘ Rhine,” and draw the subjects that have most hills, 
and least architecture in them, with chalk on smooth paper, 
till you can lay on his broad flat tints, and get his gradations 
of light, which are very wonderful ; then take up the archi- 
tectural subjects in the “ Rhine,” and draw again and again 
the groups of figures, &c., in his ‘‘ Microcosm,” and “ Les- 
sons on Light and Shadow.” After that, proceed to copy 
the grand subjects in the sketches in ‘“ Flanders and. Ger- 
many ;” or in “ Switzerland and Italy,” if you cannot get the 
landers ; but the Switzerland is very far inferior. Then 
work from Nature, not trying to Proutise Nature, by break- 
ing smooth buildings into rough ones, but only drawing what 
you see,with Prout’s simple method and firm lines. Don’t copy 
his coloured works. They are good, but not at all equal to 
his chalk and pencil drawings, and you will become a mere 
imitator, and a very feeble imitator, if you use colour at all in 


THINGS TO BS STUDIED. 407 


Prout’s method. I have not space to explain why this is so, 
it would take a long piece of reasoning; trust me for the 
statement. 


2. John Lewis. — 

His sketches in Spain, lithographed by himself, are very 
valuable. Get them, if you can, and also some engravings 
(about eight or ten, I think, altogether) of wild beasts, exe- 
cuted by his own hand a long time ago; they are very 
precious in every way. The series of the “Alhambra” is 
rather slight, and few of the subjects are lithographed by him- 
self; still it is well worth having. 

But let no lithographic work come into the house, if you 
can help it, nor even look at any, except Prout’s, and those 
sketches of Lewis's. 


3. George Cruikshank. 

If you ever happen to meet with the two volumes of 
*“Grimm’s German Stories,” which were illustrated by him 
long ago, pounce upon them instantly ; the etchings in them 
are the finest things, next to Rembrandt’s, that, as far as I 
know, have been done since etching was invented. You can- 
not look at them too much, nor copy them too often. 

All his works are very valuable, though disagreeable when 
they touch on the worst vulgarities of modern life ; and often 
much spoiled by a curiously mistaken type of face, divided so 
as to give too much to the mouth and eyes, and leave too little 
for forehead, the eyes being set about two thirds up, instead 
of at half the height of the head. But his manner of work is 
always right ; and his tragic power, though rarely developed, 
and warped by habits of caricature, is, in peplys as great as 
his grotesque power. 

There is no fear of his hurting your taste, as long as your 
principal work lies among art of so totally different a charac- 
ter as most of that which I have recommended to you; and 
you may, therefore, get great good by copying almost anything 
of his that may come in your way; except only his illustra- 
{ions lately published to ‘“ Cinderella,” and “Jack and the 


408 APPENDIX. 


Beanstalk,” and ‘‘Tom Thumb,” which are much over-labour: 
ed, and confused in line. You should get them, but do not 
copy them. 

4, Alfred Rethel. 

I only know two publications by him ; one, the “ Dance of 
Death,” with text by Reinick, published in Leipsic, but to be 
had now of any London bookseller for the sum, I believe, of 
eighteen pence, and containing six plates full of instructive 
character ; the other, of two plates only, ‘‘ Death the Avenger,” 
and “Death the Friend.” These two are far superior to the 
‘“‘ Todtentanz,” and, if you can get them, will be enough in 
themselves, to show all that Rethel can teach you. If you 
dislike ghastly subjects, get ‘‘ Death the Friend” only. 


5. Bewick. 

The execution of the plumage in Bewick’s birds is the most 
masterly thing ever yet done in wood-cutting ; it is just worked 
as Paul Veronese would have worked in wood, had he taken 
toit. His vignettes, though too coarse in execution, and 
vulgar in types of form, to be good copies, show, nevertheless, 
intellectual power of the highest order ; and there are pieces 
of sentiment in them, either pathetic or satirical, which have 
never since been equalled in illustrations of this simple kind ; 
the bitter intensity of the feeling being just like that which 
characterises some of the leading Pre-Raphaelites. Bewick is 
the Burns of painting. 


6. Blake. 

The “ Book of Job,” engraved by himself, is of the highest 
rank in certain characters of imagination and expression ; in 
the mode of obtaining certain effects of light it will also be a 
very useful example to you. In expressing conditions of glar- 
ing and flickering light, Blake is greater than Rembrandt. - 


7. Richter. | 

I have already told you what to guard against in looking at 
his works. I amza little doubtful whether I have done well in 
including them in this catalogue at all; but the fancies in them 
are so pretty and numberless, that I must risk, for their sake 


THINGS TO BE STUDIED. 409 


the chance of hurting you a little in judgment of style. If 
you want to make presents of story-books to children, his are 
the best you can now: get. 


8. Rossetti. 

An edition of Tennyson, lately published, contains wood- 
cuts from drawings by Rossetti and other chief Pre-Raphaelite 
masters. ‘They are terribly spoiled in the cutting, and gene- 
rally the best part, the expression of feature, entirely lost ;* 
still they are full of instruction, and cannot be studied too 
closely. But observe, respecting these wood-cuts, that if you 
have been in the habit of looking at much spurious work, in 
which sentiment, action, and style are borrowed or artificial, 
you will assuredly be offended at first by all genuine work, 
which is intense in feeling. Genuine art, which is merely 
art, such as Veronese’s or Titian’s, may not offend you, though 
the chances are that you will not care about it: but genuine 
works of feeling, such as Maude and Aurora Leigh in poetry, 
or the grand Pre-Raphaelite designs in painting, are sure to 
offend you; and if you cease to work hard, and persist in 
looking at vicious and false art, they will continue to offend 
you. It will be well, therefore, to have one type of entirely 
false art, in order to know what to guard against. Flaxman’s 
outlines to Dante contain, I think, examples of almost every 
kind of falsehood and feebleness which it is possible for a 
trained artist, not base in thought, to commit or admit, both 
in design and execution. Base or degraded choice of subject, 
such as you will constantly find in Teniers and others of the 
Dutch painters, I need not, I hope, warn you against ; you 
will simply turn away from it in disgust ; while mere bad or 
feeble drawing, which makes mistakes in every direction at 
once, cannot teach you the particular sort of educated fallacy 


* This is especially the case in the St. Cecily, Rossetti’s first illustra- 
tion to the ‘* palace of art,” which would have been the best in the book 
had it been well engraved. The whole work should be taken up again, 
and done by line engraving, perfectly ; and wholly from Pre-Raphaelite 
designs, with which no other modern work can bear the least compari- 
son, 


410 APPENDIX. 


in question. But, in these designs of Flaxman’s, you have 
gentlemanly feeling, and fair knowledge of anatomy, and firm 
setting down of lines, all applied in the foolishest and worst 
possible way ; you cannot have a more finished example of 
learned error, amiable want of meaning, and bad drawing 
with a steady hand.* Jetsch’s outlines have more real ma- 
terial in them than Flaxman’s, occasionally showing true fancy 
and power ; in artistic principle they are nearly as bad, and in 
taste worse. All outlines from statuary, as given in works on 
classical art, will be very hurtful to you if you in the least like 
them ; and nearly all finished line engravings. Some particu- 
lar prints I could name which possess instructive qualities, 
but it would take too long to distinguish them, and the best 
way is to avoid line engravings of figures altogether. If you 
happen to be a rich person, possessing quantities of them, and 
if you are fond of the large finished prints from Raphael, Cor- 
reggio, &e., it is wholly impossible that you can make any 


* The praise I have given incidentally to Flaxman’s sculpture in the 
“Seven Lamps,” and elsewhere, refers wholly to his studies from Nature, 
and simple groups in marble, which were always good and interesting. 
Still, I have overrated him, even in this respect ; and it is generally to 
be remembered that, in speaking of artists whose works I cannot be sup- 
posed to have specially studied, the errors I fall into will always be on 
the side of praise. For, of course, praise is most likely to be given 
when the thing praised is above one’s knowledge ; and, therefore, as our 
knowledge increases, such things may be found less praiseworthy than 
we thought. But blame can only be justly given when the thing blamed 
is below one’s level of sight; and, practically, I never do blame any- 
thing until I have got well past it, and am certain that there is demon- 
strable falsehood in it I believe, therefore, allmy blame to be wholly 
trustworthy, having never yet had occasion to repent of one depreciatory 
word that I have ever written, while I have often found that, with re- 
spect to things I had not time to study closely, I was led too far by sud- 
den admiration, helped, perhaps, by peculiar associations, or other de- 
ceptive accidents ; and this the more, because I never care to check an 
expression of delight, thinking the chances are, that, even if mistaken, 
it will do more good than harm: but I weigh every word of blame with 
scrupulous caution. Ihave sometimes erased a strong passage of blame 
from second editions of my books; but this was only when I found it 
oTended the reader without convincing him, never because I repented 
of it myself, - 


THINGS TO BE STUDIED. 411 


progress in knowledge of real art till you have sold them all 
—or burnt them, which would be a greater benefit to the 
world. I hope that some day, true and noble engravings will 
be made from the few pictures of the great schools, which the 
restorations undertaken by the modern managers of foreign 
galleries may leave us; but the existing engravings have 
nothing whatever in common with the good in the works they 
profess to represent, and if you like them, you like in the 
originals of them hardly anything but their errors. 

Finally, your judgment will be, of course, much affected by 
your taste in literature. Indeed, I know many persons who 
have the purest taste in literature, and yet false taste in art, 
and it is a phenomenon which puzzles me not a little: but I 
have never known any one with false taste in books, and true 
taste in pictures. It is also of the greatest importance to you, 
not only for art’s sake, but for all kinds of sake, in these days 
of book deluge, to keep out of the salt swamps of literature, 
and live ona rocky island of your own, with a spring and a 
lake in it, pure and good. I cannot, of course, suggest the 
choice of your library to you, every several mind needs differ- 
ent books; but there are some books which we all need, and 
assuredly, if you read Homer,* Plato, Auschylus, Herodotus, 
Dante,+ Shakspeare, and Spenser, as much as you ought, you 
will not require wide enlargement of shelves to right and left 
of them for purposes of perpetual study. Among modern 
books, avoid generally magazine and review literature. Some- 
times it may contain a useful abridgement or a wholesome piece 
of criticism ; but the chances are ten to one it will either waste 
your time or mislead you. If you want to understand any sub- 
ject whatever, read the best book upon it you can hear of ; 
not a review of the book. If you don’t like the first book you 


* Chapman’s, if not the original. 

+ Carey’s or Cayley’s, if not the original. I do not know which are 
the best translations of Plato. Herodotus and Aischylus can only be 
read in the original. It may seem strange that I name books like these 
for ‘“‘ beginners:’* but all the greatest books contain food for all ages ; 
and an intelligent and rightly bred youth or girl ought to enjoy much, 
even in Plato, by the time they are fifteen or sixteen. 


412 APPENDIX. 


try, seek for another ; but do not hope ever to understand the 
subject without pains, by a reviewer's help. Avoid especially 
that class of literature which has a knowing tone; it is the 
most poisonous of all. Every good book, or piece of book, is 
full of admiration and awe; it may contain firm assertion or 
stern satire, but it never sneers coldly, nor asserts haughtily, 
and it always leads you to reverence or love something with 
your whole heart. It is not always easy to distinguish the 
satire of the venomous race of books from the satire of the 
noble and pure ones ; but in general you may notice that the 
cold-blooded Crustacean and Batrachian books will sneer at 
sentiment; and the warm-blooded, human books, at sin. Then, 
in general, the more you can restrain your serious reading to 
reflective or lyric poetry, history, and natural history, avoiding 
fiction and the drama, the healthier your mind will become. 
Of modern poetry keep to Scott, Wordsworth, Keats, Crabbe, 
Tennyson, the two Brownings, Lowell, Longfellow, and Cov- 
entry Patmore, whose “ Angel in the House” is a most finished 
piece of writing, and the sweetest analysis we possess of quiet 
modern domestic feeling; while Mrs. Browning’s ‘ Aurora 
Leigh ” is, as far as I know, the greatest poem which the cen- 
tury has produced in any language. Cast Coleridge at once 
aside, as sickly and useless; and Shelley as shallow and ver- 
bose ; Byron, until your taste is fully formed, and you are able 
to discern the magnificence in him from the wrong.” Never 
read bad or common poetry, nor write any poetry yourself ; 
there is, perhaps, rather too much than too little in the world 
already. , 

Of reflective prose, read chiefly Bacon, Johnson, and Helps. 
Carlyle is hardly to be named as a writer for “ beginners,” 
because his teaching, though to some of us vitally necessary, 
may to others be hurtful. If you understand and like him, 
read him; if he offends you, you are not yet ready for him, 
and perhaps may never be so; at all events, give him up, as 
you would sea-bathing if you found it hurt you, till you are 
stronger. Of fiction, read Sir Charles Grandison, Scott’s 
novels, Miss Edgeworth’s, and, if you are a young lady, 
Madame de Genlis’, the French Miss Edgeworth; making 


s 
7 


THINGS TO BE STUDIED. 413 


these, I mean, your constant companions. Of course you 
must, or will read other books for amusement, once or twice ; 
but you will find that these have an element of perpetuity in 
them, existing in nothing else of their kind: while their pe- 
euliar quietness and repose of manner will also be of the great- 
est value in teaching you to feel the same characters in art. 
Read little at a time, trying to feel interest in little thinys, 
and reading not so much for the sake of the story as to get ac- 
quainted with the pleasant people into whose company these 
writers bring you. A common book will often give you much 
amusement, but it is only a noble book which will give you 
dear friends. Remember also that it is of less importance to 
you in your earlier years, that the books you read should be 
clever, than that they should be right. Ido not mean oppres- 
sively or repulsively instructive ; but that the thoughts they 
express should be just, and the feelings they excite generous. 
It is not necessary for you to read the wittiest or the most 
suggestive books: it is better, in general, to hear what is al- 
ready known, and may be simply said. Much of the literature 
of the present day, though good to be read by persons of ripe 
age, has a tendency to agitate rather than confirm, and leaves 
its readers too frequently in a helpless or hopeless indignation, 
the worst possible state into which the mind of youth can be 
thrown. It may, indeed, become necessary for you, as you 
advance in life, to set your hand to things that need to be 
altered in the world, or apply your heart chiefly to what must 
be pitied in it, or condemned ; but, for a young person, the 
safest temper is one of reverence, and the safest place one of 
obscurity. Certainly at present, and perhaps through all your 
life, your teachers are wisest when they make you content in 
quiet virtue, and that literature and art are best for you which 
point out, in common life and familiar things, the objects for 
hopeful labour, and for humble love. 








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